The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance

Google

This is a digital copy of a book lhal w;ls preserved for general ions on library shelves before il was carefully scanned by Google as pari of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

Il has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one thai was never subject

to copy right or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often dillicull lo discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher lo a library and linally lo you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud lo partner with libraries lo digili/e public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order lo keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial panics, including placing Icchnical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make n on -commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request thai you use these files for
personal, non -commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort lo Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each lile is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use. remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other

countries. Whether a book is slill in copyright varies from country lo country, and we can'l offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through I lie lull lexl of 1 1 us book on I lie web
al |_-.:. :.-.-:: / / books . qooqle . com/|

THE SKEPTICS

VTTTv
ITALIAN EENAISSANCE

JOHN OWEN

SWAN SONNENSOHEIN & CO.
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.

I

I*

c Die Erde i*t der grosse Fehen, tcoran die Menschheit, der eigentliche Prometheus^
gefesseU ist, und vom Geier des Zweifels zerjieiscld wird; 8%e hat da* Licht
gestohlen, und leidet nun Martern dafUr?

Heine, Religion u. Philosophie ( Werke : vol. xiii.), p. 307.

l llfaut avoir ces troit qualiUs; Pyrrhonien, Geometre, Chretien soumis ; et ellen
tfaccordent et se temper ent, en doutant ou ilfaut^ en avsurant ou ilfaui en se sournet-
tant ou ilfaui?

Pascal, Penties, Ed. Faugere, vol. ii. p. 347.

it

\

Butler * Tanner, The Bel wood Printing Works, Froine, and Loudon.

TO

J. T. DANSON, Esq.,

OF GRA8MERE,

I RESPECTFULLY DEDICATE

THIS WORK

ON THE RENAISSANCE SKEPTICS:

THOSE OF ITS READERS

WHO KNOW HIM

WILL KNOW WHY.

JOHN OWEN.

East Anstiy,
January 6th, 1898.

INTRODUCTION.

Different causes of various kinds and degrees of cogency may
exist for prefixing to a new work, that bugbear of the modern
reader — an Introduction. Thus there may be reasons of un-
deniable expediency for dealing in a separate and initiatory
chapter with the general outline or purport of the book.
Among such reasons may be one or more whose special opera-
tion gives them a peculiar claim to consideration. The book
may e.g. treat of a subject long misapprehended and mal-
treated by writers who have generally dealt with it in time
past; or, like a stranger who can claim kinship among the
circle into which he craves admission, the book may be so
allied with an older work on the same or kindred subject that
it is capable of receiving from it no small amount of reflected
illustration in the way of references or extracts. Now both of
these reasons combine as justifying an introduction to the
present work. 1st. It is related to a work which the author
published so far back as 1881 under the title of 'Evenings
with the Skeptics.' It may indeed claim to be in some sort
a continuation of that work — carrying down the history of the
chief representative Skeptics to the period of the Renaissance
and a century or more beyond.

By this, however, is not intended that such a continuity in
the subjects of the two works need be emphasized or exagger-
ated, so that the essential independence, self-sufficingness, and
conclusiveness of these two volumes should be deemed for a
moment open to question. The Free-thought of the Renais-

Tll

viii Introduction.

sance is in reality a Free-thought of its own. Its Skepticism
in Italy and France is largely an indigenous and native pro-
duct. Originated by strange unforeseen causes, fostered by
new and mysterious influences— political as well as religious
and social — conditioned by circumstances, stimulated by move-
ments and energies altogether peculiar to itself, the Skepticism
of the Renaissance can always claim historical consideration
in and for itself alone. It is unique in the history of human
speculation. There can therefore be no hesitation in regard-
ing the theme of these volumes as independent, as standing
aloof in its complete amplitude and entirety from, e.g., the
Free-thought of Scholasticism and Medievalism as well as
from that of modern European History. Unlike most commo-
tions and upheavals in the history of human thought — which
we might conceive not incapable of repetition at least in part —
it stands absolutely alone, a kind of awa^ \ey6fievov in the
continuous utterance of progressive humanity ; and it is just
this isolated magnificence which renders the culture of the
Renaissance, as an epoch and product deserving attention,
autonomous and independent.

The visual range and power of the man who emerges from
prison, and surveys for the first time a broadly extended
landscape outside its walls, is necessarily a different faculty
exercised under different conditions, from the restricted, half-
blinded vision which his former confinement alone permitted.
This truth is not essentially lessened or impaired by the fact
that the original structure of the organ remains the same ;
since it is its ocular power, its correlation to its environment
and the light which that environment supplies, the extent and
kind of visual consciousness, or the sensibility it is capable of
inducing — these are the qualities that constitute eyesight, and
these are wholly modified by the supposed change from im-
prisonment in a dark cell, to the liberty of outlook over a
vista unbounded on all sides. The thoughtful reader who
compares e.g. an average treatise of Jerome's or Augustine's

Introduction. ix

with a work of Dante's or Petrarca's soon becomes aware of
the essential and overwhelming difference in his literary and
speculative surroundings. In type, temperament, emotional
and spiritual susceptibilities, etc., the men, though parted by
centuries, are by no means dissimilar ; bat in passing from the
culture of the Latin Fathers to that of the Renaissance leaders
he feels as if he had suddenly entered a new world, and this
feeling of novelty is not lessened by what is equally true, that
this new world, in harmony with its name, is in great part a
Resurrection — the thought and lore of Greece and Rome, for
so many centuries held in thraldom by Ecclesiastical Chris-
tianity, reasserting suddenly and unexpectedly that vital
energy which animated the old world, proclaiming in unmis-
takable accents their inherent supremacy and their ancient
freedom, their liberty of Thought and their liberty of Doubt.

At the same time, and with the distinction just pointed out
remaining prominently before our minds, we must by no
means f orgei that Skepticism in the view of the Author, and
as an inspiring principle of the following work, implies the
function of a natural energy or intellectual organ. Hence it
has qualities and discharges offices which are necessarily akin
in all periods and in all conditions. Especially its relations —
critical and antagonistic — to dogma of every kind, must under
every variety of condition and circumstance be very largely
similar if not identical. It is therefore of primary importance
that the meaning and sphere of Skepticism should be marked
out with as great clearness as possible. For this purpose the
author is persuaded he cannot do better than lay before his
readers a few observations partly apologetic, partly expository,
extracted from the preface of his former work. Besides throw-
ing light on the subject and treatment of the present work, it
may help to set at rest a misconception — against which the
author has been struggling for years — which has long affected
and perverted current notions of Skepticism both in Philosophy
and Theology.

x Introduction.

Firstly. — The author deems it necessary to advise his
readers that he has adopted the orthography of Skeptic and
Skepticism partly for the sake of conforming to the increasing
and true taste of spelling foreign words in their own manner,
but chiefly for the purpose of bringing back, if possible, a
much abused philosophical term to its primitive use. In these
volumes ^^^r^^IO ..iff ft^grfd it? Aw 'ff f,a1 QT H *lg««i*ftl mean-
ing; in other words, it denotes simply the ex ercise of the
questioning flrLd ^iTspen si ve faculty ; ftfld the Ske ptic is above
all thi ngs the Inquirer, the indomita ble , never -tiring Searcher
after Tmt.h— t.hft rffltJ p . R<! f ft™1 r gftt?fi thlTlfeftf fo r ™rhn™ search
may be a nefcoesity even more imperious than the definitive
attainment of the object sought It follows that Skepticism
is confined to ho period, race, or religious or secular belief.
The energy itself being altogether irrepressible and natural,
its manifestation is no more blameworthy than other instincts
and energies of human speculation, which also share a natural
basis and starting point. It may also be further allowed in
reference to its varied objects, that the forms assumed by
Skepticism may be indefinitely numerous ; and unless the
members of the great body of thinkers and inquirers can be
classified, nothing but confusion and indistinctness of thought
can well be the result. Many writers have indeed remarked
the confused appearance presented by ordinary Histories of
Philosophy ; in which thinkers of all kinds are huddled to-
gether without any regard to intellectual affinities or similari-
ties. At least it seems worth considering whether some ele-
mentary basis of classification might not be adopted which
would subdivide philosophers according to their psychological
idiosyncrasies and tendencies. Thus e.g. they might be ar-
ranged, as Diogenes Laertius suggested, into two main
classes, Synthetic and Analytic; or, using the more usual
terms, Dogmatists and Skeptics— denoting respectively those
in which constructive or disintegrating instincts preponderate.
Such a division, although not rigidly logical, seems the best of

Introduction. xi

which the subject is capable. Hence the present work, taking
as its subject eminent examples of the analysing, inquiring
type of intellect, endeavours to show the similarity of its
methods and procedures under varying conditions of time,
race, country, diversity of dogmatic and social environment,
etc. For the purposes of such an inquiry it is necessary to
remember that Skepticism may be regarded from two stand-
points.

1. In relation to dogma, it is the antithetical habit which
suggests investigation — the instinct that spontaneously dis-
trusts both finality and infallibility as ordinary attributes of
Truth. It inculcates caution and wariness as against the con-
fidence, presumption, self-complacent assurance of Dogmatists.
In this respect a history of doubters is in fact the history of
human enlightenment. Every advance in thought or know-
ledge has owed its impulse and inception to inquiring doubt.
Hence it would be idle to deny or attempt to minimise the
historical importance of Skepticism, or to ignore the perennial
antagonism between doubt and dogma — the dynamic and
static principles of all human knowledge.

2. Considered in itself, Skepticism implies (1) Continuous
inquiry ; (2) Suspense, or so much of IFas is needful in. impel'
men to search, as well as to im part thp i frttdnm wTnVh p^rtning
to the exercise of all intellectual energy. This is, as already
remarked, the literal meaning of the word, as well as its
general signification in Greek philosophy. The Skeptic is
therefore not the denier or dogmatic Negationist he is com-
monly held to be. Positive denial is as much opposed to the
true Skeptical standpoint as determinate affirmation. One as
well as the other implies fixity and finality. Each, when ex-
treme and unconditional, makes a virtual claim to omni-
science.

The true Skeptic may hence be defined as the seeker after
ultimate Truth, or, in other words, the Absolute; HeTlfTthS'
searcher who must needs find, if he succeed in his quest, not

xii Introduction.

only demonstrable and infallible, but unconditionally perfect
and all inclusive Truth. This definition of Skepticism may
serve to remove some of the objections made against it as an
antagonistic influence to religion, and especially to the Christian
Revelation. Taking, however, Christianity in its primary and
true sense, as we find it embodied in the words and life of Christ,
this supposed conflict of its dictates with reasonable inquiry
after truth is nothing else than an ecclesiastical fiction. Cer-
tainly the claims of a Religion which asserts itself as the
Tbuth, which bases freedom upon truth-discovery, whose
Pounder's profession was that He came to bear witness to the
truth, and which appealed to the Reason and Conscience of
mankind, i.e. to their instincts of spiritual and moral truth,
could never be fairly represented as opposed to truth-search.
To the further objection that the definition of Christianity as
Revelation renders further search needless, an answer is given
in the course of this work. Here it may be remarked that,
as a matter of fact, hardly one of the thinkers commonly
accounted Skeptics, notwithstanding their aptitudes for free
inquiry and their impatience of dogma, have ever thought of
impugning the essentials of Christianity, in other words, the
two great commandments of the law proclaimed by Chbist as
the basis of His religion. What has been most affected by
Skeptical disintegration has not been Christianity so much as
its undue ecclesiastical development.

As regards the method and plan of the work — the inter-
mingling of philosophical discussion with formal essays — it
may be enough to say that it seems especially demanded by
the subject. A series of didactic essays, however useful for
dogmatic purposes, would ill accord with the freedom which
necessarily pertains to philosophical inquiry. Another ad-
vantage not less marked is the formal recognition of divergent
standpoints in the contemplation of Truth. Without this,
indeed, Free-thought and free discussion are mere contradic-
tions in terms, while a third reason of a different kind seems

Introduction. xiii

to be the expediency of investing philosophical subjects, when-
ever possible, with a humane, homely, and familiar interest.
Writers on philosophy are too apt, as a rule, to affect the
position of hierophants: they pose as careful watchers over
sacred and incommunicable mysteries : they account them-
selves teachers of esoteric lore, and in harmony with their
high vocation, their language is oftentimes pedantic and unduly
technical. But whatever might have been urged in defence
of such exclusiveness some centuries ago, it is certainly in-
defensible in these days of general culture. There are few
problems that have emerged in the history of human specula-
tion which might not profitably be discussed by well-informed
and candid disputants, and few minds, not hopelessly stunted
by excessive dogma, that might not benefit by such earnest
and friendly colloquy. All such discussions must tend to
engender intellectual independence, to awaken and stimulate
thought, as well as to promote its truthful and ingenuous
expression. This indeed represents one chief object of this
work — its didactic as distinct from its historical aim. Writing
the history of truthseekers, the Author incidentally advocates
untiring and disinterested search for Truth as the duty alike
of the Scientist, the Philosopher, and the Christian. Hence
he adopts as the text of his subject the remarkable saying of
Locke, that to love Truth for Truth's sake is the principal part
of human perfection in this toorld, and the seed-plot of all other
virtues.

Prom the foregoing remarks every reader of intelligence will
have gathered that the Author of these volumes has a de-
liberate, long- excogitated, and very earnest purpose in view.
In other words he regards Skepticism, with all allied forms of
Philosophical Thought and Method, as e.g. Eclecticism, as
likely to claim a far greater sphere of energy in the Future
than it has in the Past, and this too in the domain not of
Theology only, but of Philosophy and Science as well. For
this reason he regards this work as possessing — with whatever

xiv Introduction.

other qualities it may claim — the extremely useful merit of
opportuneness. It responds, indirectly, but not the less com-
pletely, to various indications and signs and forecasts which
appear to announce a free and Skeptical awakening and re-
energizing of human speculation in the near future.

I. In Theology the Skeptical method falls in and harmonizes
with the true conception of Faith — especially as laid down
by the earliest teachers of Christianity — which subsequent
Ecclesiastical Dogmatism, for its own selfish purposes, has
sought to pervert or obscure. It not only allows but postulates
a defect of demonstrable knowledge as an inevitable condition
of man's limited faculties — an inseparable condition of his
earthly lot. It supplements this partial attainment of man's
intellectual and ratiocinative powers by an appeal to instincts,
feelings, prepossessions and aspirations, which, though lacking
in assured conviction, can never as long as man, variously
endowed and cultured, retains the use of his nobler faculties,
be without a certain indirect, moral and spiritual coercion. It
comes to the aid of his inadequate reasoning by supplementing
it with various kinds and degrees of Probability — approxima-
tions to or justifiable deviations from supposedly demonstrable
Truth. Not only does it accept in all needed cases the due
amount of philosophical and judicial equilibrium pertaining to
each ; but it demands that freedom of outlook and speculative
research which is the inalienable prerogative of Thought, and
which is both allied with and presupposes that entire absence
of bias or preconception implied by Suspense. This, in the
true analysis of religious and spiritual insight, is but another
way of saying that so far from destroying, Skeptical thought
gives new birth and energy to the religious faculty. It lays
stress on, seizes and brings to the forefront, gives due room
for the play and expansion of what is most valuable in our
religious life. It calls into being, emphasizes and intensifies
that fiducial relation of man to God which is the starting point
and animating principle of all religious life. On the other

Introduction. xv

hand it destroys the germs of that conceit, narrowness, sur-
charged individuality and Dogmatic exclusiveness, which of
all evils incident to Religion, is undoubtedly the greatest.

Happily, no symptom of our modern religious culture is
more marked in the present day than the growing decrease —
among all thoughtful and spiritually minded men — of Dog-
matism in speculative Theology. Nor are the effects of this
decrease in inducing caution, exactness in the estimate and
statement of Religious Truths, liberality in the criticism and
judgment of alien views, etc., less notable. Probably as the
years move on, each charged, as by annual increment, with the
wisdom and enlightenment of the Past, Skepticism and Free-
thought may once more be permitted — what has been so long
wholly denied or grudgingly allowed them — their legitimate
use not as foes and subverters, but as conditions and contribu-
tory causes of Religious Belief.

II. To Philosophy also the condition of Skeptical analysis
and suspense give the needed starting point, the sustaining
energy, the intellectual justification. At present, the two
chief directions of Philosophical movement and research are
(i.) on the metaphysical side — the latest developments of Hege-
lianism (ii.) on the Physical side, the various ramifications of
Darwinism. Both of these developments seem to have passed
the Dogmatic stages, which are as inevitable to schools and
systems of Thought, as certain diseases of infancy are to grow-
ing children. Except in a few cases and directions, and those
steadily diminishing, the bounds of Dogmatic Truth are con-
tinually becoming more restricted. The Hegelian meta-
physician — mindful of the history of that Dogmatic Faith
since it was first promulgated by the Master — will not bind
himself to the tenet that no other correlation of Thought and
Being than that he formulated is possible or conceivable. The
Darwinian — mindful of certain potent reactions and retracta-
tions — will not dare to pronounce on the number of originating
Types from whence all the terrestrial varieties of Life are de-

xvi Introduction.

scended ; nor, if he be wise, will he venture to affirm that the
scientific knowledge at his command suffices to give an ade-
quate account of the commencement in time of a single one of
the countless types of existence with which creation teems.
The reasonings and theorizings both of one and the other are
now largely hypothetical. Both the Metaphysician and the
wise Physicist agree to disclaim the Omniscience which could
alone warrant the Dogmatic assumptions and unverified con-
clusions of their respective Sciences in days gone by. Here
again Skepticism attests its worth as the attendant on Philo-
sophic and Scientific Truth. It teaches the student both of
the phenomena that lie within his grasp, and of the unknown
and unfathomed ocean of Phenomena and Noumena that en-
circle his individual existence, and therefrom stretch forth in-
to Immensities in every direction, that caution, humility, self-
restraint, and suspense are primary qualifications for Truth
Search and Truth Discovery.
A final word as to the scope of the following work :
The Author cannot lay claim to the merit of so selecting
his representatives of Skepticism and Free-thought that most
forms and directions of those energies find in them their
impersonations and illustrations. He has merely taken the
thinkers as they came in a kind of rough chronological order,
but having thus conformed to what seemed the historical
exigencies of the case, it is to him a source of gratification
that the thinkers so selected do in reality represent so great
a variety of the processes of Free-thought and Skepticism as
could fairly be expected in the men chosen, and in the times
and circumstances which they illustrate. In short, they are
mostly typical thinkers, who will always find, as long as
humanity with its thought and knowledge-greed endures,
mental scions and successors among cultured and thoughtful
men.

The Author, who did his share of proof corrections and
reference verifications during a memorable period of physical

Introduction. xvii

debility and prostration, has several friends to thank for much
sympathy and varied assistance. These, however, he is not
permitted to mention, or to express openly and frankly as he
fain would, his most grateful acknowledgments. To the pub-
lishers he feels himself indebted for unvarying kindness and
courtesy. Indeed he must ask for special permission to record
his thankful appreciation of the invaluable counsel and
practical help of Mr. Win. Swan Sonnenschein in compiling
the excellent and elaborate Index, which enriches the book
and immeasurably enhances its usefulness to the student. That
the Author of the masterly volume, The Best Books, which
may claim to be at once the most useful and most excellent
Bibliography of its kind in the English language, should have
put aside important literary work, in order to compile a full
Index to these volumes, is an honour which their author cannot
sufficiently appreciate, and which beggars every emotion of
ordinary thankfulness.

JOHN OWEN.

East Anstey Kectory,

January 6th, 1898.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Pi.O«

GENERAL CAUSES 3

Commerce and the Crusades 22

The Secularization of Literature 82

Mysteries and Moralities 51

Revival of Classical Studies 58

Arab Culture and Philosophy 68

Reaction of Ecclesiastical Dogma 72

Reaction against Asceticism 74

Reaction against Sacerdotalism 78

Reaction against Dogma 82

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL CAUSES AND LEADERS 96

Dante 96

Petrarca 107

Boccaccio 128

Luigi Pulci 147

Machiavelli 160

CHAPTER 1H.

GENERAL CAUSES AND LEADERS (continued) 179

Guicciardini 179

Pomponazzi 184

CHAPTER IV.

GIORDANO BRUNO 245

CHAPTER V.

VANINI 845

xlx

THE SKEPTICS OF THE ITALIAN

RENAISSANCE.

VOL. I. B

* Die Erde ist der grease Fdsen, woran die MenscMieit, der eigentliche Prometheus,
gefesselt ist % und vom Qeier des Ztoeifels zerfleischt wird; sie hat das Licht
gesiohlen y und leidet nun Martern dafUrJ 1

Heine, Religion u. PhUosophie (Werke: vol. xiii.), p. 807.

* H faut avoir ees trots qualitis; Pgrrhonien, Qeometre, Chretien soumis; et elles

s'accordent et se temperent, en doutant ou il faut, en assurant ou il faut en sje soumet-

tant ou ilfauV

Pascal, Pensies, Ed. Faugere, vol. ii. p. 847.

CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CAUSES.

Trevor. The Skepticism of the Italian Renaissance — our
present subject — necessitates a treatment like that we bestowed
on its kindred manifestation in Ancient Greece. I purpose
therefore acquiring a general idea of it by passing in brief
review the foremost types of the intellectual freedom it pro-
duced before we consider its overt philosophical Skepticism in
the person of Pomponazzi. 1

Miss Leycester. Please tell us your selected types of
Italian Free-thought.

Trevor. There is as you know rather an embarrassment of
riches in the subject — a difficulty in discerning the wood on
account of the trees. After some hesitation I chose Dante,
Petrarca, Boccaccio, Pulci, Macchiavelli and Guicciardini as

1 On the subject of Pomponazzi the authorities quoted are : — De immorialitale
Animas, 12mo. 1584 (which, however, according to Brunet is a false date).

1. Petri Pomponatii, PhUosophi et Theologi doctrina et ingenio prcutantUeimi
opera. Basilise 1567.

2. Luigi Ferri, La Psicologia di Pietro Pomponazzi (Peale Accademia dei
Lincei). Roma 1877.

3. Pietro Pomponazzi, Studi etorici tu la tcuola Bolognese e Padovana del
eecolo xvi., per Francesco Florentine Firenze 1868.

8a. Review of the foregoing work in M. Franck's Moralists et Philosopher,
pp. 85-136. Paris 1872.

4. £. Renan, Averroet et VAverroism. Paris 1867.

5. Niceron, Memoir es, vol. xxv. pp. 829-850.

6. Pauli Jovii, Eiogia Doctorum Virorum.

7. Tiraboschi, Storia, etc., also Ginguing's HUtoire de la Litterature cTItalie.
Of the Historians the best account of Pomponazzi is to be found in Brucker,

Tol. iv. f Ritter, vol. ix. and Buhle (Translation by Jourdain), vol. ii.

See also Bayle's Dictionary, art. Pomponace, and Bartholmess ; article in the
Diet, dee Science* Philoeophiques.

On the general subject of the Renaissance the authors employed may be
found in the foot-notes.

8

4 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

fair representatives of all the most salient of its many-sided
aspects.

Harrington. A judicious selection I think on the whole;
though if the subject had fallen to my share I should have
tried to include Ariosto, Cardinal Bembo and possibly JEneas
Sylvius.

Aeundel. Not I presume in addition to Trevor's half-
dozen. As it is we have surely more than enough regarding
them as preliminary to the consideration of an obscure thinker
like Pomponazzi. From an artistic point of view we might
demur to the erection of such noble vestibules to a rather
insignificant temple.

Trevob. You misapprehend my object Arundel. It is not
merely as introductory to Pomponazzi that I purpose dwelling
briefly on these leaders of Italian Free-thought. The names
I have mentioned are of course abundantly able to stand each
one by himself. But our subject has a dual aspect, i. We
are in presence of a large diversified composite movement of
Free-thought, of which we must get a general idea. ii. We
require a specimen of its most developed Skepticism, which we
have in Pomponazzi.

Arundel. The plan of assessing a Thought-Epoch by
examining its chief names is, I am aware, not uncommon, but
I confess it is not to my mind altogether satisfactory. I have
heard it called a 'grapes of Eschol argument' — judging a
country by its abnormal products. It is not unlike the old
method of writing history by chronicling the births and deaths
of kings and the battles of great generals, and leaving the
every-day life, and ordinary thought of the people quite out of
-consideration. The method is not calculated to give true
average results. If one were asked the ordinary stature of the
people of London it would hardly be fair to confine one's
measurements to the guards, or any other picked body of tall
men.

Trevor. Perhaps not, but in history which is dependant
on the records of the, often distant, past, we must use the
materials we have, not the non-existent ones we could have
desiderated ; and for obvious if unfortunate reasons the outline

General Causes. 5

of kings, generals, prominent politicians are clearer and more
easily seized upon than that of minor mortals. The same rule
holds in the Literature of the past, in which only the prominent
lights leave behind them works of permanent worth by which
their intellectual stature can be estimated. But the con-
clusions derivable from examining the taller specimens of
humanity are by no means devoid of significance for those of
ordinary growth. For given the height of the tallest and we
can compute approximately the stature of the next in growth.
Moreover the foremost minds in any period of general mental
excitation and upheaval are only the vanguard of the army
following in their steps.

Harrington. You are quite right in urging the necessity
of this mode of computing the average intellectual state of any
given epoch. We must adopt some method analogous to a
trigonometrical survey— climb the highest hills and take sights
from one to the other.

Miss Leycester. That may do in measuring countries, but
we want to measure common people, their thoughts, feelings
and opinions. I see no other way than judging as nearly as
possible of normal measurements from those that are extreme.
Our problem is, given a Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, to find
the intellectual condition of ordinary Italians in the thirteenth
and two following centuries.

Mrs. Harrington. There is, I think, another element in
the calculation that brings the literary giants in closer contact
with the multitude, and that is, the former not only take
instinctively their position in front of the crowd, but the crowd
recognizes them as leaders and accepts their guidance, which
it would not do if it did not share their thoughts, sympathies
and aspirations. The Italians who recited with enjoyment
Dante's Commoedia, or Petrarca's Rime, or laughed over
Boccaccio's Decameron, were certainly men of a kindred even
if vastly inferior intellectual stature.

Trevor. Very true, and for gaining that approximation to
the general level of Italian thought, which I acknowledge is
all we can hope to achieve, the names I have selected seem to
me especially well adapted on account of their popularity. As

6 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

to our typical example of Skepticism, Pomponazzi, whom
Arundel appears inclined to under-estimate, is really a very
remarkable man, whose importance in the history of Italian
literature and European thought, his fellow-countrymen are
only just beginning to realize. He is in fact the leading
philosopher, in the strict sense of the term, of the Italian
Renaissance, and occupies in the intellectual history of Italy
the same position as Descartes in that of France, or Bacon in
that of England, though without sharing their influence.

Miss Leycester. But I do not see why you claim for him
the position of being the earliest Italian skeptic, for religious
unbelief is a well marked feature of Italian Literature at least
a century before the time of Pomponazzi.

Trevor. No doubt. You have a considerable amount of
Free-thought and aspiration from the beginning of the thir-
teenth century. In fact it is almost co»val with the birth of
the national literature, which we cannot place higher than the
twelfth century. . . . What I mean by assigning to Pom-
ponazzi the first place in the philosophy of the Italian Re-
naissance is that he is the founder of a new method. He is the
first to break off, on the ground of logic rather than feeling,
from scholasticism and medieval theology — to refuse allegiance
to the traditional standards of preceding centuries, to insist
upon the indefeasible right of the human reason to enquire and
determine for itself what is true in philosophy and religion.

Harrington. Especially, as it would seem, the former.
But if we are to assign to Pomponazzi the first place in the
freer intellectual movement in Italy he becomes the leading
thinker of the same movement regarded as European. For
Italy caught the first rays of the new light long before
Germany or England.

Miss Leycester. I see that Professor Fiorentino in his
work on Pomponazzi, claims the Italian movement of Human-
ism and Free-thought as superior to the religious revivalism
of the German Reformation. He says that if Italy did not
follow the Lutheran movement it was because she had already
surpassed it. 1

1 Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 153. 'La nostra Rinoscenza adunque entra innanzi

General Causes. 7

Arundel. I should strongly demur to that opinion. The
religious reality of Luther, even if sometimes tainted with
fanaticism, was immeasurably better than the licensed hypo-
crisy which was the usual form that emancipation from spiritual
tyranny took in Italy.

Harrington. Considered purely as a question of freedom
and leaving out of sight its ethical aspects, the Italian
humanists seem to me to have the advantage. Both were
slaves who had asserted their freedom, of whom one continued
to bear, though in an easy form and so as not to impede the
free movement of his limbs, the badges of his former servitude ;
while the other, having divested himself of his bonds, pro-
ceeded immediately to forge chains of another description,
though perhaps of a less cramping and galling nature. When
I was in Italy last summer, I enjoyed frequent opportunities of
conversing on this very subject with a learned and thoughtful
Italian, who shared the opinion of Professor Fiorentino. On
my putting to him the question, 'How much do you think
Italy has lost in the way of political and religious freedom
by not following in the steps of the German Reformation ? '
1 Lost ! Signor ! ' was his answer ; ' I do not think we have
lost anything. Germany only created another pope and
another source of infallibility. We acted more in conformity
with the dictates of human, or at least, Italian nature. For to
nine people out of ten an infallible pope of some sort is an
imperative necessity, and cceteris paribus an old one is better
than a new. We therefore kept our pope, but gradually
deprived him of all power of doing mischief. Even if Luther-
anism had suited the more fervid and imaginative tempera*
ment of our southern race, it would have retarded our literary
and philosophical progress for some centuries. Indeed it
produced this very effect in Germany itself, which cannot be
said to possess an original thinker, until Lutheranism had
expended its force, and entered upon a course of disintegration,
i.e. until the birth of Kant. 1 The enlightenment which

per ardimento, per novita, der ragionevolezza alia Eiforma Tedesca ; e se noi
non seguimmo il movimento luterano, fa perche l'avevamo sorpassato.'

1 It is only fair to remark that other causes have been assigned for the late
birth and tardy development of Philosophy in Germany compared with France

8 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

followed in the wake of the Konigsberg Philosopher is the
parallel in Germany to the great literary movement through
which Italy passed three centuries before; and Dante, Petrarca
and Boccaccio are our national representatives of Lessing,
Goethe and Schiller. As one beneficial result of our moderate
and cautious policy, Italy escaped the religious wars which
desolated France and Germany in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, most of her own disturbances proceeding
from foreign interference, and even when native, rarely turn-
ing upon purely religious questions. At present, I regard my
country as standing on a level with Germany both as to civil
and religious liberty ; and her course, besides being the only
conceivable one in her peculiar circumstances, has been less
devious, and on the whole less marked by internal disturbance
than that of her great Teutonic neighbour/ Making due
altowanoe for patriotic feelings, I think there may be some
truth in my friend's argument.

Miss Letcbsteb. Most Germans, I am aware, make the
precise point at which the active but spent energies of
Lutheranism begin to pass into the new movement of the
1 Enlightenment ' to be the publication of Kant's Critic, but I
should rather go back to Lessing, in whose oft-quoted words,
* Luther, Du hast uns von dem Joch der Tradition erlSst ; wer
erl6st uns von dem unertr&glicheren Joch des Buchstabens ? '
you have at once a starting-point, a motto, and a prognosis of
the second German Reformation.

Trevor. The pertinacity of Italians in preserving forms
and symbols when they have become emptied of all genuine
meaning is very striking. Its latest illustration you have
in the streets of Borne in the present day. Probably the
notion of the temporal sovereignty of the pope (the abortive
dogma of Pio Nono) is as dead in the minds of enlightened
Catholics, as the Papal decree which forbad Galileo to

and Italy. Leibnitz, e.g. ascribed it to the fact of the German language
differing so completely from the Latin; whereas the speculations of the
Schoolmen found an easy transition into the thought and culture of France
and Italy, by means of the affinity of their languages to Latin. See Feuerbach
Sammt. Werke V. p. 198. The same cause might seem to explain the similar
tardiness in the case of England.

General Causes. 9

teach the motion of the earth. Yet the symbols of Papal
rule are as conspicuous in Rome now as they ever were.
I own I was much struck with this contrast on my only visit
to Rome since the events of 1869-61. The outward aspect of
the eternal city was scarcely altered. True, I found the crowds
of priests and monks of old Rome replaced by Government
officials, and its municipal affairs were better administered
than in the old times. But the Papal arms were still
suspended on the portals of the Quirinal, while nothing but a
piece of tricolour bunting indicated the momentous fact that
the palace of the Pontifical Consulta was now become the
National Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the state apartments
of Victor Emmanuel's residence, I found the same pious in-
scriptions, the same ascetic pictures had been scrupulously left
in their places. In the great halls of the Capitol open for
municipal balls, the incongruity I was told reached its climax,
for the fashionable world of Rome during the season dance
before colossal statues of old Farnese or Barberini popes and in
sight of frescoes representing the martyrdom of saints, and
other legends of Catholicism. . . . Had the French been
in the place of the Roman citizens during the Revolution, they
would have made short work of the sacred symbols of the
tiara, cross keys, and all other mementos of the older regime.
. . . After all the resolution of a people not to break too
abruptly with the past — who know how to preserve symbolical
forms while altering and amending their signification — who
can in politics as in other matters discriminate between letter
and spirit — is no small proof of their capacity for freedom.

Arundel. I have seen similar views as to the superiority of
the Italian Renaissance to the German Reformation put for-
ward, but I believe them to be founded on a partial and hasty
generalization. Prima facie, there is no doubt a resemblance
between the intellectual libertinism of Italy in the 15th
century, and the rationalism and anti-dogmatism of Germany
since the time of Kant. But the resemblance seems to me
superficial; The difference is that which exists between -the
insipidity of fruit hurriedly and artificially ripened, and the full
mellow flavour of that which has enjoyed its normal proportion

to The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

of time as well as of heat, of retarding as well as stimulating
influences. The Italian Free-thought of the 15th century
is a mere tour de force, the hasty and temporary effect of
accidental causes. German * Enlightenment ' on the other
hand is the tardy but natural product of a large number of
special influences, not the least important of them being, the
wholesome mental restraint, the solidity of intellectual forma-
tion, as well as the sturdy independence of thought and
character, which the Lutheran Reformation initiated. Even
the bibliolatry which formed a necessary characteristic of the
movement, appears to me better qualified to forward healthy
mental growth, than a submission — though mainly specious
and pretended — to ecclesiastical domination. For bibliolatry,
we must remember, has engendered Biblical criticism, just as
astrology brought forth astronomy. And the continual in-
vestigation and criticism of a book like the Bible with its
diversity of character and contents, is a better educational
instrument, regarding it only from that point of view, than
the ipse dixits of a succession of priests, few of whom transcend
intellectual mediocrity. As it is Protestantism has exercised
both a purifying and strengthening influence on the mental
development of her foremost sons. Shakspeare and Goethe as
pure products of Roman Catholicism are to me inconceivable.

Tbevor. Your deduction, Arundel, seems to me hazardous.
Genius considered in itself, is for the most part independent
of religious influence of any kind. You might e.g. read the
greater part of Shakspeare or Goethe without knowing or
being able to ascertain, whether they were Catholics or
Protestants, and with Cervantes, Calderon and Moli6re as the
undoubted offspring of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism has
not I conceive any well-grounded claim of superiority, at least
to the overwhelming extent sometimes claimed for it. Of
course, indirectly and operating through a long succession of
generations, a religious creed must have its effect on the
intellect of any race or nation, and of any individual belonging
to either, and theoretically, an enlightened Protestantism, as a
creed based upon mental independence and religious freedom
ought to achieve nobler types of intellectual excellence than

General Causes. 1 1

Romanism, though whether it has done so in any particular
instance will depend largely on the nature of the intellectual
quality in question, and must in any case be exceedingly
difficult to prove. At present however our concern is not with
the products of modern Protestantism, but with an accidental
growth, *a spirit' we may term it of the Catholicism of the
fifteenth century.

Harrington. Another factor in the problem would be the
distinction between different kinds of culture. Philosophy,
criticism and erudition grow fastest where the divergence and
interchange of thought are greatest, and therefore are really
aided by political and religious agitation, when these are not
excessive. On the other hand, those branches of literature in
which ' the form ' is of primary importance, require for their
mature development long periods of peace and prosperity.
The drama e.g. as the artistic exponent of human life and
character seems to have thriven best in communities that have
been least disturbed by political or religious commotions.
Shakspeare and Calderon are perhaps the highest products of
European dramatic art, and they belong to countries which
have suffered less than any others in Europe from intestine
disturbances — I mean Spain and England. Similarly the best
products of the Greek drama had attained maturity before the
outbreak of the Peloponnesian war — the first conflict that
really shook Greek society to its base.

Arundel. Returning to Pomponazzi, to whom I think we
should confine our present remarks as being the least known
name among those brought before us by the Renaissance, my
only accessible authorities on him have been Briicker and Bayle.
. . . I am surprised to find that a thinker whose methods
and researches were in reality so hostile to Christianity should
have been so little persecuted. I presume we must regard
such immunity as a proof of the general relaxation of dogmatic
faith and teaching during the pontificate of Leo X. I wonder
whether there is any truth in the story that this Pope sent for
Pomponazzi to Rome to hear him debate with his adversary
Niphus on the immortality of the soul. Bayle tells the story
and it is repeated by Renan. 1

1 Aver roes, p. 863.

1 2 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Trevor. Both Bayle and Renan have been misled on the
point by a phrase in the letters of Gui Patin, whose reference
to the subject I will read to you (taking down a volume from
his shelves) : * Que le Pape L&m X fit venir a Rome P.
Pomponace pour le faire disputer de l'immortalit^ de Tame
contre Augustinus Niphus ; qu'il se donnoit du plaisir, de cette
dispute mutuelle, et neanmoins ' continues the sarcastic writer,
1 que tous trois n'y croyoient point non plus que la plupart
n'y croient pas aujourd'hui a Rome. 1 1 But Patin though an
amusing writer is not a good historical authority, besides
which he wrote some forty years after the supposed event.
Professor Fiorentino thinks the invitation to Niphus came from
a Bishop Fiandino, though possibly at the suggestion of the
Pope. Not that I think Leo X. or most of his sacred conclave
would have been greatly scandalized at hearing the mortality
of the soul conclusively demonstrated, especially on such an
authority as Aristotle, for those were days in which, to quote
a contemporary writer, some distinct departure from orthodox
belief was deemed the proper mark of a courtier and a gentle-
man. 2

Miss Leycester. You must not think, Mr. Arundel, that
Pomponazzi escaped persecution, even of a very violent kind,
because he did not suffer martyrdom. His biographer states
that he was actually harassed to death by his pitiless enemies
the monks. 8 Rome has more weapons than one in her armoury,
and her bloodless ones have often proved the most cruel.

Harrington. Pomponazzi must nevertheless be accounted
fortunate. Though he did not flourish in the noontide of the
Italian Renaissance, he lived in what we may term its early
afternoon hours. When we come to Giordano Bruno at the

1 Lettres, vol. ii. p. 818. Cf. Fiorentino, pp. 41, 42.

* See quotation from Caracciolo's MS. Life of Paul IV. in Ranke's History
of the Popes, Eng. Trans, i. p. 56. ' In quel tempo non pareya fosse galantuomo
e buon oortegiano colui che de' doguni della chiesa non aveva qualohe opinion
erronea et heretical As to the prevalent unbelief in Immortality, com p.
Vanini Amphitheatrum, etc., Exercit.' xxvi. pp. 151-152. So Ariosto on the
same subject, speaks of some ( who believed in nothing above their roof, 1
( non credar sopra il tetto.' Sonnetta xxxiv.

* 'Quel filosofo, che il clero aveva perseguitato a morte.' — Pietro Pompo-
nazzi, p. 68.

General Causes. 13

close of the fifteenth century, we shall find the condition of
things completely changed. The shades of mediaeval darkness
and bigotry are again beginning to gather, and Free-thought
is punished by torture and death.

Trevor. Well, we need not anticipate the close of the day
before we have basked in its sunshine, and enjoyed the bright-
ness and promise of its morning hours. This is at present our
pleasing duty : I proceed therefore to my paper, commencing
with a slight sketch of Italian Free-thought as it is indicated
by other writers, both previous to and contemporary with
Pomponazzi : —

Were we to sum up in a single word the literary and philosophi-
cal proclivities of Italy in the fourteenth and following centuries, we
could hardly select a better than the word Paganism. In the chief
centre of Christianity, around its very citadel, so to speak, the ideas
and feelings of men had suddenly undergone a portentous change.
It seemed as if the disembodied spirit of the old classical world had
again risen from the tomb, and invigorated by the repose and oblivion
of centuries, was preparing to renew its life and death struggle with
Christianity. The complaint of Juvenal : —

'. . . In Tiberim defluxit Orontes,'

might in words have been repeated, though their intention and
signification would have now required inversion, because it was the
Tiber itself, and not its eastern tributaries that was on this occasion
the source of pollution. The change was at least complete for the
time. The authorities and records of Christianity were compelled to
give place to classical writers. Instead of Augustine and Jerome,
popes and cardinals employed themselves with Virgil and Horace,
Ovid and Catullus. Homer attracts more attention than the newly
discovered MSS. of the Greek Testament. Learned bishops refuse
to read Jerome's Vulgate lest their own Ciceronian Latinity should be
corrupted, and St. Paul's Epistles are deliberately put on one side by
Cardinal Bembo on account of their unclassical Greek. 1 The Christian
Church so far as her Italian rulers were concerned might be said to
have suddenly discovered itself to be not Arian, but Heathen. That
this prevailing taste for Pagan Freedom and culture should some-
times degenerate into a liking for Pagan Licence was only what

1 Cardinal Bembo was the friend and patron of Pomponazzi, whom Pope
Leo X. appointed his secretary on account of his Ciceronian Latinity.

1 4 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

might have been expected. Perhaps it was the marvellously rapid
growth of Italian culture that, with other causes, engendered the
social demoralization which was undoubtedly its accompaniment ; for
a too hurried development in culture, art, philosophy or religion is
frequently as debilitating to communities as an over-hasty physical
development is to individuals.

To attempt a detailed narrative of all the Free-thinking and
Skeptical influences which prepared the way for, and serve to
illustrate the labours of Pomponazzi would be to write a history of
the Italian Renaissance. All that we can undertake is a rapid glance
at some of the chief causes of the movement, followed by a few
biographical illustrations of their operation in producing Free-
thought.

The commencement of free speculation in Italy is mutatis mvr
tandis not unlike the earliest development of philosophy in
Greece. The free Communes of Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries re-enact the role which the Greek colonies — some of the
more flourishing of them being on Italian soil — had filled so many
years before. These Italian cities were municipalities self-created
for the most part by the exigencies of commerce, the need of pro-
tection from ruling princes, and a desire for social intercourse as well
as for civil and intellectual liberty. Medievalism was in its very
nature repugnant to the idea of a purely secular state and therefore
to that of municipal government and communal privileges. The only
Sovereign power possessing an inherent right to exist, and to which
all others were in theory subordinate, was the Church, 1 in virtue of its
assumed divine origin, and its permanent principles of government.
. Butjbefore th e twelfth century the Italian cities had one by one
' emfitged.from the feudal thraldom which their Lomb arfl crmqnftmrg
had originally imposed upon them, and which had afterwards passed
into the hajD^oT l EeTfhurc K Contem po ra neously with this rise of
Communes in the north and centre of Italy was the revival in the
south of the long dormant idea" oT flha Monarch y — timHoly Rnman
Empire — as a secul ar power entirely independent of the C hn rA k
The commCTicemenTorthe gener al a wa kenin g t%€ politir4l ijfa whiph
gave birth to these two potent institutions, has been traced to tho.

1 Some writers would add the Holy Roman Empire which claimed to rule
Italy from a.d. 962. Bat the rapid succession of secular rulers between that
date and 476 when Odovacar conquered Italy had for a time weakened the
obligations of the Italian Communes and States to Secular Rule. Their
independence and autonomous claims form their chief characteristics. The
general recognition of the secular claim of the Holy Roman Empire cannot
be placed earlier than the twelfth century.

General Causes. 15

m

large manumission of slaves by their terrified feudal lords in ex-
pectation of the end of the world which the Church announced to
take place in the year 1000. These freed men contributed gre atly t o
the formation of_a middle ninaa in 1**1^^3 ^n^+H-ff^ qf

/the idea ancT sentiment of liberty amon g the unenf r anchised slftt^**
\ Instinctively grouping together "SPcities* and resorting to civic oc-
/ cupation s they soon formed an element or strdfifrfh ftflrt huimmiuTSTTTa
/ w nich m aae itself felt against their feudal masters. The m unicipal
freedom tnllfl galllUd upanUBll 111 Vartftus way s in the prom otion of
Free-thougKt. "ITfunilflnfld a re publlmffl BCanfl^o int from which both
Pope and Xmperbr Blight be criticised and if need were, opposed.
It presented a s against eccle sias tical and heredi tary Hnv ^rf>igntiftfl n
new conception of human rights and liberty . It stimulatec L fay the
very exercis e of self-government a spir it of freedom and independent
judgment that radiated into other spheres of human, thought and
energy. The successful effort of the Lombard League against
Frederic Barbarossa was the first distinct intimation that a new
Political power had arisen in Italy which was capable of holding its
own against the greatest feudal sovereignty of the time. It was
easy to see that this power was capable of enormous development.
The citizen, especially when the elected chief of his municipality,
was destined to attain a social position, a regard and consideration
which made him the equal of Emperor or Pope. It is no doubt
somewhat marvellous that the Communes, having learnt the secret of
their strength when united, should have made no attempt to establish
a federation, and thus laid the foundation of National Unity, but
there were potent reasons, partly in the character of the people,
partly in the circumstances of the times which rendered such
Political foresight and wisdom impossible. Nor can it be said that
Italy lost much by the postponement, for the time being, of its
national existence. It was only rea so nable that men not long
libera ted from feudal serfdom and the benumbing infliianftA of fftn jol
ideas, should becom e accustomed to freedom, and should acquire the
art of self-government, and social discipline, on a small scale, before
they attempted to coalesce their different interests and opinions into
a single nationality. 1 In all probability the political education of
the Italian Co mmune s, and their aptitude for genuine freedo nywere
fostered by the self-same causes' That" produced their mutual an-
tagonism and disintegratfon. For the rivalries existing among
themselves and between the various leagues and organizations

1 Comp. Hallam, Middle Ages, i. 859: 'Ancient prejudices therefore pre-
cluded a federate league of independent principalities and republics for which
perhaps the actual condition of Italy unfitted her.'

1 6 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

associated with them g ave an impe tu s in- ih w iifl ht, emulation, dis-
cussion and inquiry which no other agency could JiajzxLSfi&cted. 1

The Papacy way Hot at nrst hostile to the Communes, the govern-
ment of some of them continued to be administered by Pontifical
legates, while all of them acknowledged the spiritual jurisdiction of
the Pope. Indeed Hadrian IV. and Gregory VII. adopted the policy
of cherishing them as a newly developed secular power which they
might employ against the Monarchy. They did not foresee that the
democratic spirit, the civic independence and self-assertion, the
capacity for self-government, the administrative powers acquired in
secular matters might without much difficulty be transferred to
sacred affairs. All political education based on free institutions has
sooner or later proved hostile to sacerdotal despotism, and the suc-
cessors of Hildebrand discovered that the Communes were by no
means always pliant and obedient vassals of the Papacy.

Equally inimical were the free municipalities of Italy to the
Empire. The principle of self-government and" civil freedom — their
sole ration d'itre — was a standing protest against the feudal supre-
macy claimed by the Roman Empire. This position was not in reality
affected by the fact that some of the Communes were for a time so
many fiefs of the Empire, or that their chief magistrates were
nominees of the Emperor. The principle of self-rule — the training
imparted by the management of their own affairs — the self-reliant
judgment naturally engendered by political discussion were in them-
selves incentives to freedom, and quite antagonistic to the servile
recognition of any external despotism.

The advantage of an emancipation equally free from the pre-potent
influence whether of Pope or Kaiser became manifested in the
thirteenth century by the struggles of Guelf and Ghibelline, and the
discovery that those cities which had adopted the anti-feudal
principles of the Guelfs were more conspicuous for their prosperity
than those which still submitted to the suzerainty of the Empire. 8
Their independenc y 'vyaa more secure — thqir commerce wa g greater
and less impeded by fisca l restrictions —their forms of government
more el astic and adjus ta ble fo ^. iiey^rcumslince^thei i pulitjr_jagra-^
vigorous and self sustaininjg._ JCte . ; JEEfiajbest example of the h eight
of fame and prosperity to which a well-conducted commerce was
capable bTT^Hlg ly Florence."* At the cuhmmrtiuii of lie poWSrTEiiT
greatest of the Tuscan free-cities rivalled in wealth and importance
the old established hereditary sovereignties of Europe. It possessed

1 Comp. Bettinelli, Risorgimento <T Italia, cap. 8.

2 Comp. Settembrini, Lezioni di Lett, Italiana, vol. i. p. 50.

General Causes. 17

a large and well equipped standing army. Its chief magistrate was
received as the social equal of kings. Foreign nations coveted its
alliance. Its opulent merchants had their banks and houses of
business throughout Italy, in the Levant, in France, Germany,
England and Spain. Its free Institutions gave an impulse to com-
merce, and commercial prosperity imparted a new value and enhance-
ment to liberty. Allowing for the som ewhat excft p%nn.l *fl^iy.frr
of Florentine prosperiffij, the advance o f minor Communes T such as
Milan, Genoa and Pisa, in the same road of wealth and commerce
in exact proportion exceptis excipiendis as their institutions were
founded on liberty and a respect for popular ri fihts/ls a anfflftiftnt
proof of the connection and mutual ex citation "that existed .bntwoeq,
the Free cities of It aly ana tn? j ^e-thonjr J;* of thffi ^1^1*00*^

Contemporaneously with the rise of the Communes and the re-
consolidation of the Monarchy, the Papacy had reached the culmi-
nating point of its dogmatic development, and its tyrannical sway
over the human conscience. The ambitious mind and powerful
imagination of Hildebrand had conceived the idea of the absolute
supremacy of the throne of St. Peter over all terrestrial and secular
powers, without exception. In reality such a claim rested upon the
same foundation as that which Papal hierarchs had so long arrogated
of prescribing all the beliefs and authenticating all the knowledge
and inquiry of Christendom. Once grant that a power deriving its
existence and authority from Heaven is appointed to decree from an
a priori standpoint all human convictions, and to regulate every
department of human conduct, and the attempted subjugation of all
human faculties and sources of authority becomes the only logical
deduction of such a claim. If the Papacy with its power of the Keys
really dominates over the eternal world — if the intelligences and
powers of heaven are reduced to a kind of Papal executive, and God
Himself is but the obedient vassal and executioner of the Pope's
behests and fulminations — a fortiori must the same power have a
right to control all earthly potentates, of whatever kind and degree.
Was a Hohenstaufen Prince, Hildebrand imperiously demanded, to be
regarded as superior to the High Majesty of the Eternal ? Was a
mere earthly sovereign to dispute, or even to criticise, decrees and
statutes which Omnipotence itself 1 — such was the extraordinary
theory — had no choice but to approve and ratify ? or were the merely
temporary affairs and interests with which alone earthly monarchs
are concerned to be esteemed of greater import than the things of
eternity ? In remembering the enormous mischiefs Papal pretensions

1 Comp. Vogt, Hildebrand als Papat. Or eg. VIL, p. 7.
VOL. I. C

1 8 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

have caused in European history, we do not sufficiently reflect that
the most outrageous of them is only the logical issue of a few
elementary principles equally common to every system of sacer-
dotalism. Rome; in the persons of Innocent III., Gregory VII.
and Boniface VIII. only differs from other centres of priestly
domination, by being more unscrupulously logical, and by carrying
its primary maxims to their legitimate conclusion, though it be a
clear reduc&io ad absurdum. 1 From the standpoint of sacerdotalism
the plea of Hildebrand when about to excommunicate Henry, is un-
answerable : ' When Christ trusted his flock to St. Peter, saying
"Feed my sheep," did he except kings? or when he gave him the
power to bind and loose, did he withdraw any one from his jurisdic-
tion ? ' If the hierarchs of Papal and other churches no longer put
forward, at least so arrogantly, their extravagant pretensions, it is
not because they have ceased to hold them, but because, in an age of
culture and enlightenment, they merely serve to excite the ridicule
of thinking men. Hence we find — and it is not the least import-
ant of the several lessons that our subject is calculated to teach —
that excessive dogma and sacerdotal tyranny are just as fatal to the
peace and welfare of political institutions as of private individuals.
Happily the institutions when powerful can take care of their
interests, which the individual may not always be able to do. In the
comparative darkness of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we musF
therefore regard i€ as a providential circumstance that the Italiaa-
Communes and tHeT^narchy were rifting iat» yy wc i BimulUmeuuriy
with the development of thfi moat fixlTflvngnnt. preteankna of th^
Papacy, and that political rights, and wmnrnjinftl ftiH mnwim'pnl
privileges were in a position to vindicate to 8ome_ex.tenjb^theJceedom
of humanity, trodden under the iron heel of Ecclesiasticism. 8

But this co-equar~growtli of the rival powers had indirectly a .
further consequence. It suggested partly a political and secular

1 See the links in Hildebrand's chain of reasoning extracted from his
Epistles and set in order by Vogt, Hildebrand alt Paptt Gregorius VI L , pp.
172-176. Comp. also Riezler's Literarischen Wider tocher der Paptte, p. 8, etc.,
and Bryoe's Hdy Roman Empire, pp. 176-178. Hildebrand's comparison of
the sacred and secular powers respectively to the sun and moon is well
known. Comp. his Epistle*, viii. 21.

* Of course no attempt is here made to determine the political position of
the Communes. The amount of freedom which they accorded was doubtless
imperfect and precarious. They are here regarded from an intellectual stand-
point, and only in relation to Free-thought. They formedjtnoid the social and
political disorganization of the middle ages a nucleus round which gathered
the newly awakened thoughts and aspirations of Italians, from which they
-^radiated to every part of Italy, qufcxenihg all her manifold activities, national
'as well at intellectual. ' m ~ *

General Causes. 19

antagonism to Ecclesiastical domination, and partly it furnished a
neutral standpoint whence the claims both of one and the other
could be scrutinized. Hence it happened that not a few, even of
ecclesiastics, were content with a position of suspense between Pope
and Kaiser, siding now with one now with the other just as their
personal interests dictated, or else, from a feeling of indifference,
holding aloof from both. It is easy to see that however unprincipled
from an ethical point of view such a situation might possibly have
been, it was not devoid of advantages in securing greater liberty for
those who occupied it, while the mere fact of its existence did some-
thing to repress the overweening arrogance of the Papacy. But in
spite of these impediments to its development and incentives to
independent thought, it must be admitted that the Papacy obtained
a victory over the Empire, though it was one of those hard fought
victories which are not distinguishable from defeats. For a time
Hildebrand's conception of the absolute sovereignty of the Church
overpowered the old idea of the Divine Institution of the Monarchy.
We have already seen, in the case of William of Ockam, the origin
of the notion and the service it conferred as against the pretensions
of the Papacy. Its resuscitation in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, partly due to the controversies of the Popes with the
Empire, must be ascribed almost equally to the strong influx of
humanistic ideas. The theory was no longer based upon theological
considerations and on the supposed realization of 0. T. prophecy;
it now came to possess a new foundation in the excitations and
aspirations awakened by the classical revival. In the minds of
Dante and Petrarca, for instance, the conception of the Empire as
the legitimate successor of Imperial or Republican Rome imparted
a stability to the Emperor's power not the less strong from being
based on antiquarian and ideal grounds. We cannot indeed under-
stand any portion of the political history of Mediaeval Italy without
having in mind its intimate connection with the history, institutions,
nay even with the legends, of old Rome. The chief Italian cities
had long claimed to be founded by the companions of iBneas on their
voyage from Troy. 1 The language of Rome was still the accepted
literary medium for Italian thinkers down to the time of Petrarca
and Boccaccio. No small share of the consideration enjoyed by the
Church in the estimation of the Humanists was due to its retention
of the venerable tongue in which not only Augustine and Jerome,
but Virgil, Cicero and Seneca wrote. The renewed study of the
Civil Law in the twelfth century induced a closer acquaintance with,

1 Comp. A. Bartoli, Sioria delta Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. p. 160.

20 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

and in proportion, a greater admiration for, the institutions and
jurisprudence of ancient Rome. 1 The municipalities of Rome,
Florence and other Italian cities were modelled on the civic govern-
ment of Republican Rome. Their common-hall was styled the
capitol. Their officers held the old names, and so far as practicable
attempted to exercise the functions of their classical prototypes.
The effect of these aspirations after political institutions so largely
founded on true ideas of human liberty, in stimulating activity of
thought and inducing a relish for similar privileges, was immense.
No doubt the result of these classical reminiscences was not always
to foster a belief in the * Divine right ' whether of I*ope or Emperor.
The ill-starred enterprises of Rienzi and Arnold of Brescia reveal
another and more sinister aspect of ancient political studies. The
citizens of the Italian Communes sometimes regarded with venera-
tion the lives and actions of Brutus, Gato, the Scipios, and other
vindicators of popular rights. Allowing for occasional excesses in
individualism and in republican aspirations, such studies and pre-
dilections imparted a self-reliance, and a masculine tone of feeling,
which would naturally find expression in other directions. The
stern impugner of the secular power of the Monarchy might be led
to question the authority of the Papacy, especially as both claimed
to be founded on the same basis. Whatever the primary divinity
that originated and hedged round the Church and the Empire, the
action of neither power on the welfare and liberties of humanity
was so indisputably sacred and beneficial as to suggest a reverential
abstention from all criticism. Nor were the relations that had long
subsisted between the rival sovereignties of so harmonious a nature
as to confirm their boasted identity of origin ; their chief harmony
of feeling and unity of action arising from the ambition, self-
aggrandisement, and indifference to the interests of their subjects
which were common to both. Indeed the many feuds and discords
between the Church and Empire — the inherent difficulty of deciding
on the precise boundary line that separated their respective juris-
dictions — could not but suggest to thoughtful minds an examination
of the points in dispute, which was tantamount to, and in some cases
involved, a rigid scrutiny of the bases on which rested the power both
of Pope and Kaiser.

Nor did the antagonisms of the spiritual and the secular powers
exhaust the sources of intellectual excitation and friction which, like
similar agencies in other cases, tended to make and keep bright the
faculties of those exposed to them. 8 The intestine divisions of the

1 Cf. Ginguen6, HUt. Litl. d* Italia, i. 154.

* ' L 'esprit humaine,' says Ozanam {Dante et la Philotophie CaUiclique au

General Causes. 21

Papacy itself, partly on imperial, partly on ecclesiastical grounds,
did something to secure a place for the ' indifference-point ' of
Freedom. Especially was this the case when two rival Pontiffs,
one at Rome the other at Avignon, claimed, each of them, to be the
sole vicegerent of heaven, and hurled his maledictions against his-
adversary. It was not merely a realization but an enthronization
of 'Twofold Truth' when two infallibilities thus propounded
opposing decrees. Not only the cynical humanist and free-thinker,
but even warm advocates of the papacy might under such circum-
stances pardonably choose to remain in the suspense of a halting
allegiance. Confessed Fallibility even was a preferable alternative
to a divided Infallibility which was both impossible and contempt-
ible. 1 The open profligacy which characterized the Papal Court
at Avignon, as described by Petrarca and Ariosto, was partly the
immoral excess of a freedom of which a bipartite and self-destructive
spiritual power was one contributory source. Indeed the vice and
depravity of the Papacy from the twelfth century to the Reforma-
tion reveal a moral skepticism in the sense of disbelief far more
debasing, as well as more un-Christian, than any amount of pure
intellectual suspense or religious doubt. Men could not help seeing
that the interests which divided Popes- and Ecclesiastics were just
as selfishly secular as those which set the princes of this world in
fierce array against each other. Nor was it only a moral uncertainty
that these intestine discords in the bosom of the Church tended to
generate; a prior feeling was the intellectual uncertainty such a
phenomenon was calculated to create. Upon the unity of the Church
One and Indivisible depended not only the succession of its chief
ministers, but the authority of its dogmas ; and in the quickening
of men's minds by the varied stimulating influence of the Renaissance
both these ideas were exposed to a severe critical strain long before
Luther began to teach the principles of the Reformation. The senti-
ment was also independent in a great measure of the existence even
of Antipopes, for it was unnecessary to learn the dissension of the
papacy from the quarrels of two contemporaneous pontiffs when the
decrees of so many successive Popes, Ecclesiastical Councils and
writers in the past revealed a similar dissidence and contradiction.

xiii' tikde, p. 40), ' aime lea combats qui agitent les questions ; il grand it dans
les perplex ites ; il lui faut ces conditions severes sans lesquelles rien n'est
fertile ; la peine et la douleur. Les siecles de Pericles et d'Auguste sortirent
de Salamine et de Pharsale. La querelle des investitures reveilla la scholas-
tique,' etc.

1 On this subject see Vofgt. ; JEnea Silvio, etc,, aU Papst Pius IL, vol. i. p. 27 ;
a work which throws a flood of light on the relations between the Papacy
and the Renaissance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

22 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

II. Among the agencies that contributed tacraata and sustain the
Free-thought of the Renaissance, in Italy, no small place_must be
assigned to the large development of commerce and intercourse j^ith
Foreign* slates of which Italy" Tiad heen the centre fr om an . f i arly
period. Many obvious causes conspired to give Italy a superiority
in this respect above all countries on the Mediterranean. The
chief of them, and the earliest in operation were the close rela-
tions subsisting between the old and new capitals of the Western
Empire. It was partly a cause partly the effect of this commercial
activity that Italy in the middle ages became the common home of
so many different races. Foreign invasions, settlements, wars, co-
* operated still further in diversifying its population and producing
a still greater variety of manners and customs rad modes of thought.
Few were the nations of Europe, fewer still" those" on the Medi-
terranean sea-board, unrepresented in the mixed population of most
of the Italian Communes and sea-ports. Thus the internal condition
of Italy harmonized with the external influences" c1reaFe"cr~T>y its"
commercial enterprise. We cannot help being remiiideo!" of the"
similar condition of Ancient Greece, and the impulse imparted to
Free-thought by the diversity in race, culture and religion that
existed among the Hellenic tribes, while a still further resemblance
is suggested by the similar results of commercial activity in each
case. In the South of Italy, Amalfi, and Salerno had early risen into
eminence, the first commercial, the second scientific. After their
settlement in Italy the Normans seemed to have transferred their
native enterprise for buccaneering, to the more peaceful avocations
of Commerce, and by their efforts Amalfi at one period stood at the
head of the maritime towns of Italy. An admirer of the Norman
race thus celebrates their mercantile talents : —

Hsec gens est totum prope nobilitata per orbem
Et mercanda ferens et amans mercata referre. 1

On the shores of the Adriatic, Venice at a still earlier date had
acquired a reputation for her commerce with the East. From the
sixth century she had been the chief emporium for the interchange
of Italian wine, oil and manufactures, for the spices, silks, carpets,
the products of the looms of Damascus, Bagdad, Alexandria, and
other centres of Oriental traffic. Nor did she disdain in the early
portion of her brilliant career a large v traffic in slaves, selling
Christians to Mahometan masters, and Mahometan slaves to Chris-
tians. Until the rise of the maritime power W different Mahometan

\
1 Muratori, Antiq. Di$$., xxx. Comp. William of Tyrfy HUt. y lib. xviii.

General Causes. 23

states, nearly all the slave-trade of the Mediterranean was at one
time in the hands of Venice. As Venice trafficked mainly with
Alexandria and the Levant, Pisa carried on an active commerce with
African ports nearer home. In the twelfth century we find that
the Greek Emperors paid to Pisa and Genoa an annual bounty,
probably to confine their lucrative trade to themselves. The wealth
which Pisa acquired by successful commercial enterprise seems to
have become proverbial.

" Notior urbanis et ditior ille Pisanis," *

i.e. ' Richer than Pisans,' is an expression found in a writer of the
twelfth century. Nor did these Italian ports limit their operations
to the sea-board of the Mediterranean. They gradually found their
way into the Atlantic, and Venetian ships brought the produce of the
far East to the sea-ports of France, Spain and England ^ I have aj -
ready mentioned the enormous business both in Jmajicialaiid general
mercantile transactions carried on by IFrorwacewithall the principal
countries of Europe. Now Commerce, Tneed hardly observe, entails,
especially with peoples of alien race, religion and civilization, an in-
terchange not only of merchandise, the products of the earth the loom
and the hand, but also of mental productions, of language, 8 thoughts
and opinions, and their records in books and manuscripts. The ear-
lier literature of Italy, beginning with the eleventh century, contains
ample traces of such foreign Irifltience ^th^ j^pular legends, narratives
and superstitions of the time being derivable in many instances from

Oriental SOUrceSt thdlgh natlgft Ttalinna AyTiiTui' a^ft rx^xi^\oAT\i.\f\n

in the reception of an hypothesis which detracts from the originality
of their own early literature. During the two following centuries,
stimulated by commercial activity, and aided by the adventitious
fermentation caused by the Crusades, these traces become still more
marked. In the thi rteenth century Dante's Divine Comedy shows us
very clearly how. nmr . h th? i>«i;^ mind Trnn frr fining fnfi 1fyn f ^
with ideas derived from the philoao phy. religjoiu and literature of
alien nations. He is himself x»»¥ew»a^' j !W*"mrry k with Greek and
Latin thinkers, but also with th&. thought-systems of Averroes,
Avicenna, and the great Arab Free-thinker Al-Ghazzali. Nor is his
acquaintance less with the native literature of Europe, e.g. the
Provencal. Dante however recognizes the dangers to strict ecclesi-

1 Muratori, Antiq. Dus n xxx.

* Dr. Landau in bis Life of Boccaccio (p. 200) rightly points out that Italian
churchmen acquired Greek in order to discuss points of controversy with
Byzantine monks, and Italian merchants of Venice and Genoa for purposes of
commerce, long before the language was cultivated for literary purposes.

24 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

astical orthodoxy which were likely to accrue from a too familiar
intercourse of East and West, whether for commercial or warlike
purposes. Thus when reproaching ' the chief of modern Pharisees ' —
Boniface VIII. — with his war on the Colonnas, he regards his con-
duct as the more indefensible inasmuch as his foes were orthodox
Christians, and not enemies overt or disguised of the Church —

1 Avendo guerra presso a Laterano
E non co* Saracin, ne con Giudie,
Ch& ciascun suo nemico era Cristiano
E nessuno era stato a vincer Acri
Ne merca'tante in terra di Soldano ' — l

where we have a clear allusion to the ill-fame and suspected hetero-
doxy of returning Crusaders or Oriental merchants. Similarly,
Petrarca, though his sympathies were much more exclusively con-
centrated in the Ancient world than were those of Dante, yet
evinces a knowledge of all the philosophy and literature current in
his time. To Arab thought and speculation he was especially
averse. He opposed Averroes in the interests of Christianity, and
ridiculed some branches of Arab science. But his reason for doing
so was his belief that Arab learning was just as opposed to the free
culture he advocated as scholasticism itself. But more than either
of his two great predecessors Boccaccio represents the cosmopolitan
spirit of the Renaissance. His ' Decameron ' — setting aside its lan-
guage—might have been written in any one of the countries border-
ing on the Mediterranean. It manifests a knowledp-ft and ftpprrfyiatinn
of foreign thought s and fe eli ngs^ cus toms *r*A iflfflfl wHoh bfi ft M aL y the
author'^"" proclivities and the width of his sympathi eg.^_lL.xfigfial8
also a religious and phnosophicaTj^e^iclsm^alm^s^^passing into
indifference. Clearly it is the product o? an epoch when boundaries,
social, national and religious are beginning to lose their import-
ance. When humanity rather than one particular section of it be-
comes the subject of investigation, religious instincts and duties in
their widest acceptation, rather than particular sects and creeds, be-
come the objects of reverence and attention.

Together with Italian flnmmAr ^ the Cru «^^ft? ypnaf qIq^ v*> pnr-
sidered_Aa_i?Pxitributprj Jbo the_ Frep- thoug ht nf t.ViA PflmnnKAncA^
Few great events in mediaeval history have produced consequences
more unforeseen and anomalous than the Crusades. Increasing at
first the power of the Pope and the Roman hierarchy, they tended
at last to impair and diminish it. Expected to knit together the
Latin and Greek Churches they made their divisions wider, and

1 Inferno, canto xxvii. v. 86.

General Causes. 25

added a feeling of exacerbation to their mutual relations. Intended
to destroy for ever Mahometan power in the East they really con-
tributed to strengthen it. Undertaken as a religious war to propa-
gate the Eaith of Christ with the sword of Mahomet, and to vindicate
Christian dogma against unbelievers, they really subserved the
interests of Eree-thought. Directly, the Crusades, with the doubtful
exception of the fourth, did not affect Italy so much as other European
countries, as Germany, France and England. JHie_earJy.,'. establish-
ment, of the Qommun es had overthrown feudalism in Italy before
a.d. 1200. Thus the active co-operaHon'of this country in amove-"
ment^so lhtrmatelj allied with feudalism waa {U 'eventedT Only
among the Norman settlers in the South was there any vigorous
participation with the Crusaders. Indirectly however, t he effect of
the Crusades was per haps "greater in ttaTy'than in any other counTry
in Europe! Partly this inuHl be aamibed tu tile 1 superior r eceptivity
of the Italian ngf ttre^SnTTt o "the advance* flf the nation in enlighten-
ment and civTfization. Partly lt"w*&fl a regt llt of the"Hrt lm"ate com-
mercial In^eTCOTtrscnriiready existing "IJeTweeh Italy and the" East.
Crusaders from'othw'Eur^petitf'WJUlJLl'lUH juumeved UVBi'larid to
Italy in order to embark at Venice, Pisa or Genoa. Returning
Crusaders found the shipping belonging to these ports most con-
venient for coming back to Europe. As a rule therefore, whatever
intellectual importation, whether in the form of thought or its written
transcript, found its way back from the East to Europe, it was first
examined and perhaps partly appropriated in Italy before it was
passed on to less-favoured parts of Europe. I need not point out the
enormous stimulus this traffic imparted to the commercial activity
of the great marTtlmVpofVs bFTtaly, and Its addition — neither small
nor unimportant — to the civilizing influences of that commerce.

Passing over their political causes, the Crusades in their primary
intention are religious wars. The Cross as the symbol of Roman
Christianity is arrayed against all systems of dis- or mis-belief.
Judaism as well as Mahometanism, Greek Christianity as well as
Oriental Heathendom, is ranked as its inveterate foe. The imperious
dogmatic spirit so long cherished by the Church, was by a favourable
conjuncture of events transformed for a time into popular fury.
The preaching of the first Crusade was attended with those brutal
and fanatical outbreaks against the Jews which were so common in
the middle ages. The unthinking populace, stimulated in many
instances by bigoted clerics, could not discriminate between the
Unbelief of Pagans and that of Jews. Nor was the chivalry of
Europe which followed Godfrey of Boulogne and subsequent Crusad-
ing leaders to the Holy Land a whit further advanced in toleration.

26 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Few scenes are more discreditable to Ecclesiastical Christianity,
though a direct result of its dogmatic pretensions, than the ruthless
massacre of Jews and Saracens which attended the taking of Jerusa-
lem, or the still more unutterable horrors and barbarities which
marked the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade.^ There is
~ indeed no doubt that the first result of the Crusades was to intensify
men's religious passions, and to blind them to all sense, of Justice
and humanity .*" Even the better qualities of chivalry, the kindness
it enjoined to the weaker sex, its consideration for dependants, were
quite obliterated before the unholy zeal which an intolerant ortho-
doxy excited. But as the Crusades proceeded, much of this feeling
of pitiless antagonism seems to have died away. Probably the
French barons who followed St. Louis and the English chivalry of
Richard Coeur de Lion were themselves somewhat more humane
than the truculent soldiers of Geoffrey of Boulogne, or the ruffian
mercenaries of Baldwin Earl of Flanders and Dandolo of Venice.

Their warfare was less for orthodoxy, or greed under the guise of
orthodoxy, and more for prestige ; their conduct was less swayed by
such ignorant fanatics as Peter the Hermit, and more by the laws of
courtesy and honour inherent in chivalry. Nor could the wise and
beneficent toleration of Saladin have been lost on them. In contrast
with European Kings and Priests, here they beheld a mere Paynim
or Heathen giving effect to lessons of Christian charity and toleration
unheard of in Christian lands. 8 In his dominions all men wore
esteemed equal from a religious point of view. Jews were not per-
secuted, Christians were not forbidden to worship in their own way.
On poor Jews and Christians he bestowed alms with the same con-
sideration and impartiality as on his own co-religion aries. Men like
Frederick Barbarossa might well compare such conduct to that of the
chiefs of Christendom to the merited disadvantage of the latter.

1 A new light has been thrown on this event, and incidentally on the
motives and aims which animated the Crusaders generally, by ' Mr. Pears'
valuable and painfully interesting monograph*: — The Fall of Constantinople,
being the Story of the Fourth Crusade. London, Longmans, 1885.

8 In the Chansons de Geste the ordinary mode of defying Saracens to battle
is the courteous formula : —

( Felon Paien, toz vos confonde Dex.'

* On the character of Saladin com p. Sedillot Hist, dee Arabee, vol. i. p. 285.
The contrast between the purer morality of Moslem rulers, and the corrup-
tion of Christian Priests and Princes, was a point of which Satirists readily
availed themselves. For an interesting example see c Sir John Maundevile
and the Sultan of Egypt,' in Wright and Halli well's Reliquce Antiques, vol. ii.
p. 113.

General Causes. 27

Indeed it was to this comparison between Christianity and Mahome-
tanism so forcibly suggested by the Crusades that much of the whole-
some influence of that movement was due. 1 No doubt the comparison
might have been made nearer home had it not been for the ignorance,
exclusiveness, and bigotry which the Church so diligently fostered,
and which made communication with Mahometans a heinous
offence. By her own proclamation of a Crusade this prohibition
was removed altogether in the East, and partly in the West. The
relation between the rival creeds, too, was of a different character
from that which subsisted between Christianity and Judaism, or
Christianity and Greek and Roman thought. In the former case the
relation in its essence was not so much an antagonism as a rivalry
between two faiths both springing from a common origin. While
the systems of classical antiquity were almost as multifarious and as
devoid of any principal of union as a rope of sand, so that their
opposition to Christianity consisted in their negative standpoint —
with Mahometanism on the other hand the relation was of a far
more direct and positive kind. It fought Christianity with its own
weapons. To the formulated belief of the Church it opposed distinct
convictions of its own. Against the authority of Christ and the Pope
it arrayed that of Mahomet and his prophetic descendants. The
Crusades were the climax of the long rivalry that had existed
between the two faiths, which in effect divided between them nearly
the whole civilized world. When therefore from their actual contact
in Palestine as well as from the Arab civilization of Spain certain
characteristics, doctrines, and excellences seemed inferrible as
pertaining exclusively to neither, the effect for free- thought and
religious toleration was of an especially startling and convincing
description. The philosophic thinker weighing the two religions
in impartial balances, and laying due stress on the best productions
of each, might conceivably take up a point of suspense between the
two ; at least he could hardly fail to see that an equitable decision
respecting the rivals required a different standpoint from that of
ordinary Ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Moreover this claim of the
Moslem creed for consideration suggested to Christendom by the
Crusades had other grounds on which to base itself. It was further

1 It seems now agreed that the Crusades did not, at least directly, aid the
cause of European science in the strict sense of the term. Dr. L. Leclerc, who
in his Hittoire de la Midicine Arabe has compiled a careful inventory of the
numberless translations that disclosed Greek and Oriental science to Euro-
pean eyes, has found only two which can be traced to the East. Most of them
belong to the Arab occupation of Spain. Cf. Dr. L. Leclerc, Hut. de la Med,
Arabe, vol ii. p, 868.

28 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

enforced by the remarkable advance of Arab races not only in
civilization and refinement, but in the arts and sciences. In the
twelfth century — the century of the Crusades — the foremost place
in Medicine, Physical Science, especially Astronomy, and in Archi-
tecture was occupied by Arabs. Even if the Koran had not con-
tributed directly to this result it had proved no obstacle to it. 1 In
the later stages of its development Mahometanism had undoubtedly
manifested a plasticity, an eager appetite for knowledge, a readiness
to adapt itself to new currents of thought and feeling far exceeding
anything that could be attributed to Christianity as a whole. How
far this might be ascribed to greater disinclination to slavish
literalism, and a reliance on a body of dogmatic tradition outside the
text of the Koran, 8 is a point we need not discuss. Whatever the
original cause, the superiority in most respects of the Moslemism to
the Christianity of the twelfth century is a fact every candid in-
quirer must concede.

That this superiority was acknowledged is amply attested by the
records, fictitious as well as true, of the conversion of prominent
Christians to Moslemism. I need not remind you of the ill-fame
the Knights Templars acquired* by their sympathy with the religion
and usages of their Saracen foes. Recent investigation has shown
that however exaggerated these reports, they were by no means
destitute of foundation. 8 Without dwelling longer on this part of
my subject, which I shall again have to touch upon, we can readily
understand that the Crusader, with no imputation on his good faith
or his religious perspicacity, might occasionally return from Palestine
with a more impaired faith in the Dogmas of Ecclesiastical Chris-

1 The comparative effects of the Bible and Koran respectively on the
growth of liberal culture within Christianity and Islamism is a subject de-
serving investigation. It may be proved that the Koran both in mediaeval and
modern times has offered less real opposition to the advance of secular learning
than the Bible in the hands of misinterpreters and fanatics has done. Prof.
Dieterici speaking of the Arab culture of the tenth century, says that th?
influence of the Koran and Mahometan legends was only indirect. They served
to satisfy the religious sentiment and set forth Beligion and Philosophy as
One Truth. l Philosophic der Araber im X Jahrhundertf Mikrokosmus, p. 203.

* The Sonnah or Mahometan tradition was never so completely substituted
for the direct teachings of the Koran as the Dogmatic Teaching of Christian
Churches has been for the iptiseima verba of Christ.

8 The words of De Bracy in Sir W. Scott's Ivanhoe — 'The bruit goeth
shrewdly out that the most holy order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a
few heretics in its bosom,' have been corroborated by modern research. Comp.
e.g. F. Nicolai's Versueli aber den Tempelorden, 1782. On the other side, see also
Dollinger's Essay, Der Untergang dee Tempelordens, in vol. iii. of his Akadem*
ieche Vortrage^ p. 245, and the authorities there quoted.

General Causes. 29

tianity, and a higher respect for the miscreant * Paynim, than before
his enterprise he could have thought possible.

The literary outcome of this teaching we have in Boccaccio's cele-
brated story of the Three Rings. This is, considering its amplitude
of meaning, the earliest declaration of religious toleration we possess
in any European language. It is also the first European essay on a
science which even now is only in its infancy — that of Comparative
Religions. Here we have the three great Religions, Christianity,
Moslemism and Judaism contrasted for the first time in the spirit
of philosophy and true humanism, with no exclusive sentiment of
orthodoxy and carping bigotry either on one side or the other. It is
difficult to realize the full importance of this most admirable of all
Boccaccio's stories, and the difficulty is not lessened by the con-
sideration that it had long existed in other collections of Tales, 2
besides occupying a foremost place among the popular notions of his
time, 3 before Boccaccio gave it immortality by shaping it in his own
picturesque fancy, and embodying it in his exquisite language. Thus
under the dread shadow of the Papacy, and even after the pro-
mulgation of its claim for universal sovereignty, was enounced the
startling theory of a Religious Toleration which might be interpreted
almost as indifference — a declaration of co-equality before God for
Jews, Moslems and Christians. If the particular moment of the
announcement was in striking contrast to the latest pretensions of the
Papacy, it was not less so in regard to the Anti-Judaic and Ma-
hometan sentiment of Christendom at large. Few European towns
of any magnitude existed, the streets of which had not flowed with
Jewish blood, while the intensity of mutual hatred between Christian

1 Gibbon's note on the word miscreant is still worth reading. Hist. R. E., vi.
p. 441 (Bonn's Edition). Comp. Littre Diet. : sub. voce mecreant.

1 Dr. Marcus Landau, in his learned Quellen des Decameron, p. 62, assigns the
immediate source of Boccaccio's * three rings ' to the romance of * Buson da
Gubbio ' called * the Adventurous Sicilian. 1 Whereupon Professor Bartoli in
his I Precursori del Boccaccio, p. 27, remarks : * It is most true indeed that we
have there an identical story. I do not however believe this justifies us in
saying that Buson was the immediate source of Boccaccio's Tale, for I find the
self-same story repeated in the Hebrew Treatise Schebet Jehuda, in the Qcsta
Romanorum, in Dis dou vrai aniel, in our Cento Novelle anticke, and in the Summa
prcedicantium of Bromyard. I learn also from Schmidt that this story was
widely diffused in the middle ages, and I find something of the same kind in
the old narrative of the Twelve Ancylia of Numa. Dr. Landau in his work
above-mentioned shows reason for believing that the tale is of Jewish origin
(Quellen, p. 64). The same hypothesis is maintained in an article by M. Michel
Nicolas in the Correspondence iAUeraire for July 5th, 1857. Comp. on this
subject, Burchardt, Cultur d. Renaissance, vol. ii. p. 340. Notes.

8 Baldelli, Vita di Giov. Boccacci, p. 830.

30 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

and Moslem daring the middle ages and the earlier Crusades could
scarcely be exceeded. Under the circumstances it was a portentous
declaration that there existed no true basis for the jealousies and ani-
mosities so deeply rooted in the feeling of Christendom. No doubt
by Christ Himself, had the relation of Moslemism to His Gospel come
before Him, the issue would have been determined by the simple test
of its efficacy in promoting love to God and love to Man ; but in the
eye of the Papacy no heterodoxy could be more pronounced than a
disavowal of absolute and incomparable superiority for the teaching
of Christ. An attempt has been made to ascribe the origin of the
fabulous work, 1 De Tribus Impostoribus to Boccaccio's story. The
attempt is refuted by the bare designation of the pretended Book.
Indeed estimating its object by its title, it must, assuming its ex-
istence, have had an aim of an entirely opposite character. There is
nothing in Boccaccio's story to justify the imputation of imposition.
The difference between the rings is one of age not of intrinsic value.
The tale if it were to have another title might be called ' De Tribus
Religionibus,' or using the synonym then in use for Religion ' De
Tribus Legibus.' For myself I cannot help thinking that the Book
De Tribus Impostoribus, if really connected with Boccaccio's story, is
merely the satirical construction given to it by some fanatical monk
by way of bringing its moral to a reductio ad absurdum ; or else a
polemical comment upon it, put forward by some skeptical opponent
of all religions alike. Hallam pronounced Boccaccio's tale skeptical. 8
No doubt it is so. If I may be allowed the paradox I should say that
its truth, beauty and efficacy consists in what is termed its skepticism.
The point of the story is contained in the words " E cosi vi dico,
signor mio, delle tre leggi alii tre popoli date da Dio Padre, delle
quali la quistion proponesti : ciascuno la sua eredita, la sua vera legge,
e i suoi commandamente si crede avere a fare ; ma chi se 1' abbia,
come degli anelli, ancora ne pende la quistione." 8 But the skepticism

1 The work commonly passing under this title does not at all answer to its
name, and is probably spurious. The best Edition of it is that of M. Gustave
Brunet (Philomneste Junior), Paris, 1861. It may be described as a true but
crude Essay on Comparative Religions. So far however from implying or
asserting the falsity of the commonly received Religions, it asserts that each
so far as it is in harmony with Nature and Reason, contains germs of Truth.
The central proposition of the work is this: 'Religionem et cultum Dei
secundum dictamen luminis naturalis oonsentaneum et veritati et sequitati
esse/ p. 12 : Cf . on this subject Burckhardt, Cultur d. Renaissance, ii. p. 841.

1 Literature of Europe, vol. i. p. 189. Gabriel Naude was of opinion that the
story proved Boccaccio to be a perfect Atheist ! ! Naudceana, p. 88, Comp.
Renan, Averroee, Ed. iii. p. 278.

8 Quoted from Opere Volgari, i. p. 66.

General Causes. 31

herein expressed relates merely to the assumption of Special
Authority, or the superiority of one over the rest. There is no
skepticism implied as to the Divine origin or Ethical obligation of
either creed. The standpoint is that of the philosophic thinker who
can discriminate between the accidental 'variations which attach to,
or perhaps deteriorate, each creed, and the deeper religious and moral
significance common to the three alike. For my part I regard the
words, uttered at such a time, as the most vigorous and outspoken
reiteration of ' Peace on earth, goodwill to men ' that Christendom
had listened to since the coming of Christ.

Could Classical Pagandom with its multifarious aspects of thought
have been described as a single religion, Boccaccio would doubtless
have made the number of Rings four. 1 In many respects Greek and
Roman Antiquity was much nearer to the sympathies of Humanists
than Mahometanism. Sokrates and Plato, Virgil and Cicero were in
far higher esteem with Petrarca and Boccaccio than Averroes and
Avicenna. Possibly, so high was the estimate, religious as well as
intellectual, in which the Humanists held the chiefs of classical
culture, it was not thought necessary to include, with Jews and
Mussulman, persons whose claims to Divine truth and immortality
were so generally acknowledged. And here I cannot help pointing
out the advance in point of tolerant thought which Italian Humanism
had made in the interval between Dante and Boccaccio. Dante's
well known pourtrayal of Mahomet as the Arch-schismatic has, as we
shall soon see, all the customary marks of Ecclesiastical bigotry and
malevolence. Indeed in the lines I quoted just now he seems to
think animosity against Jews and Mahometans legitimate, while
Boccaccio on the contrary makes the Prophet of Arabia a fellow-heir
with Moses and Christ of the grace and love of the Eternal. Per-
haps it might be invidious to ask how far the ecclesiastical Chris-
tianity of the nineteenth century has attained the level of' Christian
magnanimity and tolerance displayed by Boccaccio's Three Rings, or
Lessing's immortal reproduction of it in ' Nathan der Weise.' Re-
garded as a literary phenomenon, it is a somewhat curious coin-
cidence that the selfsame lesson of large-hearted charity should have
impressed itself upon the German ( Sturm und Drang' of the
eighteenth century as on the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth.

Paxtly_the outgrowth of the political and social fermentation_I
have briefly sketched, partly an independent development of causes

1 Cardan however makes the number of the Great Religions four by in-
cluding Paganism as one. As to the superiority of any one over the rest he
leaves it to chance. ' His igitur arbitrio victoria relictis ? '

32 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

inherent to thft Ifaljn* 1 ****** } • ♦ an y rate n^ftrrtliin p ; lw.frwftTrifl tQ [*h*

middle ages, we meet earl y in thft~efo vftn*h AAnfnry ^ i ntflllp^ timl^
ptr^iwfwaiuiii i<— »iimi in HA/»/v^^jpp ^o;^ g^nr^ ?f fbfi Frftft-th^nrht

of fliB Renaissance to which I give the general name of

THE SECULARIZATION OF LITERATURE.

A recent writer ascribes the commencement of this movement to
the reaction which took place when men found that the world did
not come to an end as the Papacy had prophesied, and as they had
anticipated, in a.d. 1000 : ' Whereupon they took renewed possession
of the earth, and of themselves.' l That this circumstance helped
largely to repress the excess in other-worldliness which marks the
dark ages, and to suggest new conceptions of the worth of terrestrial
existence, we can readily believe. But I do not think we can make
it the sole or even chief impulse of the Secularization of Literature,
which I should attribute to causes operating more widely and through
a greater extent of time. For we must remember that Literature of
a rude kind existed in Italy throughout the dark ages. Amid its
political struggles, the enslavement of its population by one con-
queror after another, and the social degradation and savage manners
engendered by these perpetual changes, there still remained a few
straggling rays of the ancient enlightenment it once possessed.
Notwithstanding the animosity of the Church, the honoured names
of Latin Poets were still cherished by isolated scholars, clerical as
well as lay, as a kind of sacred esoteric culture — a mysterious
worship veiled to the profane vulgar. With the growth of the
Papacy, however, all forms of Literature became Romanized. His-
tory, Poetry, Natural Science, as well as Dialectic and Metaphysics,
were enlisted in the service of the Church, all departments of
human thought shared her dogmatic spirit, all were utilized for
her own objects, all had to subserve her interests. Literature as a
spontaneous free outgrowth of the human spirit could scarcely be said
to exist.

But a momentous change now set in. The human intellect began
to rouse itself from the lethargy — the bane of societies as of indi-
viduals — called ' Dogmatic slumber.' Reason so long the slave of

1 A. Bartoli, / Preeursori di Rinascimento, p. 19. The removal of the terror
caused by the expectation of an immediate end of the world was attended by
various effects, political, social and to some extent literary. Signor D'Ancona,
in his Precursor* di Dante, p. 42, points out as one of its results the impetus it
gave to speculations and legends connected with the world beyond the grave.

General Causes. 33

Authority began to assert her own rights. Cariosity as to nature,
humanity, literature, began to stir and disclose itself. Rudimentary
science, or rather superstitions containing the germs of science, mani-
fested incipient vitality. The human mind so long confined in the
trammels of religious dogma began to exhibit a restlessness that be-
tokened a growing dissatisfaction with the passive stolidity of its
condition. The energies it had been compelled to devote exclusively
to theology now demanded a wider sphere. But intellectual and
religious revolutions do not at first alter the processes to which the
mind has become accustomed. Guided by social instincts, and domi-
nated by powerful associations, men generally choose to put their new
wine into old bottles. The mind, in its progressive transmutations,
changes not the character of its activities so much as the objects to
which they have heretofore been directed ; and it is only by ascer-
taining practically the inconvenience of older methods — the unfitness
of old bottles to retain new wine — that the change is extended to one
as well as the other. Hence we have in the commencement of Italian
Free-thought a series of transferences of intellectual energy from
particular departments of Ecclesiastical Literature to corresponding,
provinces of secular learning. Thus History, concerned exclusively,
in mediaeval times, with the record of Ecclesiastical events, began to
chronicle political and other mundane affairs. The hymns and lyric
poetry of the Church paved the way for poems of love and adventure,
and the troubadour sang with equal erotic ardour the charms of the
Virgin and of his own mistress. Legends of saints and martyrs
were converted into stories of chivalry and ancient mythology ; and
the wandering minstrels of the Renaissance recounted, with philo-
sophic impartiality, the adventures of Homeric heroes, of the Paladins
of Charlemagne's court, or the miracles performed on a saint's tomb.
The first step towards the modern Drama was taken when the
miracle-plays, which at first formed part of the special services of
the Church, were gradually divorced from religion, first by being
played outside the Church, next by giving place to " moralities "
and to subjects taken from heathen mythology, and lastly by direct
imitation of Latin comedy. Nor was the secularization I speak of
confined to literature. The dialectic of the schools, once the chosen
but not very safe weapon of Theology, was gradually found to have
applications to the whole domain of human knowledge and ratio-
cination; and, itself the offspring of secular learning, began to
display strongly marked tendencies to revert to its original scope and
object. The influence extended itself even to popular beliefs — super-
stition was secularized. The miracles of mediaeval Romanism tended
to create a greedy but unwholesome appetite for the marvellous in
vol. 1. D

34 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

.. Nature, and the exorcisms, predictions and general thaumaturgism of
the Church prepared the way for a stronger faith in the miracles of
astrology and magic.

This new direction of human energy was in itself an advance,
although its object was not in every instance more intrinsically
valuable to human progress than that which it tended to replace.
The current of intellectual activity, though diverted from its former
course, did not thereby lose its former characteristics. The fetters of
dogma, credulity, and superstition, continued to clank on the limbs
that had achieved a partial deliverance from them. Still it was some-
thing gained to have reached a region of speculation other than that
included in religious teaching, even with the drawback of itself being

-some grotesque superstition like alchymy or astrology. At least
the change of standpoint and object of investigation involved motion,
and contact with fresh questions and problems implied a possibility
of intellectual stimulus. Anything was better than the barren
stagnation of superstitious dogma, and the stolid immobility generated
by sacerdotalism. A sentiment more pious than wise has styled the
centuries preceding the Renaissance — * the Age of Faith.' If Faith
it be, it is indistinguishable from the most debasing credulity. It
was a Faith which involved and perpetrated the most cruel outrages
on the Reason and intelligence of humanity. The incredible extent
of superstition current, not only among the people but among the
clergy and other learned professions, in the tenth and two following
centuries is exemplified by a curious product of the Literature of the
time — I mean those compilations of general knowledge, the true
ancestors of the modern encyclopaedias, and the secular co-relatives
of the Quodlibetal Literature of the School Theology — which by a
curious coincidence seem to have preceded the Renaissance just as
the Encyclopaedists of France inaugurated the Revolution. 1 There is
no limit to the easy faith which these purveyors of general informa-
tion seem to have demanded of their hearers. Nature they contem-
plated through a thick dark veil of mystery and supernaturalism. 8
The earth was the abode of various kinds of marvellous beings such
as centaurs, griffins, dragons, some of which derived their existence

J * The 'all inclusive* tendencies which animate these mediaeval Encyclo-
pedists are first found in Arab learning. . As a recent author remarks, c all the
great Arab Physicians were to a certain extent encyclopaedists.' They culti-
vated and professed to know every branch of secular learning then in existence.
Cf . Dr. Leclerc, Histoire de la Mtdecine Arabe, vol. i. p. 12.

8 Comp. Prof. Bartoli'8 Summary of this Encyclopaedic lore of the middle
ages in chap. vii. of his Sioria delta Letteratura ltaliana, pp. 281-258, and chap,
viii. of the same author's / Primi Due Sccoli delta Letteratura Ital., pp. 220-284.

General Causes. 35

from pre-Christian antiquity, while others were the offspring of
Ecclesiastical superstition. The woods were inhabited by Fauns
which were engendered by insects found under the bark of trees,
these were said to be born with wings but they afterwards lost them,
and became satyrs having horns on their head and goat's feet.

Peasants' cottages were infested with Fairies which could not be
ejected but by exorcisms. One kind of Lamiae were mischievous
sprites which crept into men's houses at night and perpetrated all
manner of elfish tricks. Another kind were she-dragons inhabiting
river caves : these were accustomed to steal away women who came to
the rivers to bathe, and compel them to suckle their young. Geography
was, as might be supposed, a fruitful source of marvels and portents.
The earth was believed by some to be square, by others concave, by
others flat. It was thought to be surrounded by the ocean on every
side ; and the story of an anchor dropped from the sky by a ship sail-
ing on the 'waters above the firmament ' was gravely reported, and as
gravely credited. Islands were supposed to exist where no one could
die, others into which no animal of the female sex could enter, others
in which bodies buried did not putrefy, etc. A twelfth century
writer describes India as the abode of men with one eye, men with
one leg, headless men whose eyes were placed in their shoulders
while two cavities in the breast served for nose and mouth, men who
did not eat but subsisted on the odour of a certain fruit What is
remarkable in all these encyclopaedic writers is their magnificent
unconsciousness of ignorance. They pass from one marvel to another
with no perception of the unusual character of the events they
describe. No matter how startling the phenomenon they are never
at a loss to account for it. They have just as little hesitation in
assigning causes to earthquakes and lightning as they have to the
miraculous properties of herbs and precious stones. They profess as
much faith in dreams, charms and auguries as in the most common-
place occurrences and facts of daily life. The indifference thus dis-
played to any possible distinction between the natural and super-
natural is extended to the sacred and secular. The Speculum Majus
of Vincent of Beauvais — the chief encyclopaedia of the twelfth century
— is an inexhaustible treasure-house of this antique lore, and displays
in profusion its most peculiar characteristics. The learned author —
for learned in the sense of erudition he most certainly was * — quotes

1 Compare the list by Fabricius of Books and Authors quoted by Vincent.
Biblioth. Qnxca, vol. xiv. pp. 107-125. This comprises 850 names, which are
cited in the Speculum Natural*, etc. To these might be added, says. Prof.
Bartoli, about 100 other authorities cited in the other two parts of his Speculum,

36 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

with perfect impartiality, and as sources of co-equal authority, the
works of the Ancients, the writings of the Arabs,, the decrees of
Christian councils and Ecclesiastical writers, and the enormous
literature, if I may use the term, oral and written, of the popular
traditions, legends and superstitions of his own time. In two suc-
ceeding chapters he discusses the death of Cato and the Angelic
salutation of the Blessed Virgin. Extracts from the De Arte Amandi
of Ovid are followed by a letter of Abgarus to Jesus. Side by side
are dicta of Seneca and Juvenal, and miracles of the Madonna, while
catalogues of Kings of England and France are in close juxtaposition
with the legends of Barlaam and Josaphat. 1 To assert that this
unconscious dogmatism — these extravagancies of belief — are exclu-
sively attributable to similar phenomena within the Church would
clearly be wrong. The degraded state both of Religious Belief and
the Secular Learning of that period are traceable to the same general
causes. 8 At the same time it is no less true that dogmatic ex-
aggeration and religious superstition contributed to engender, cor-
roborate, and intensify similar credulity in other directions. The
natural tendency of all religious faith, based too exclusively on the
supernatural, is towards extravagance. Hence the stress laid upon
the purely thaumaturgic elements in any religion will be an in-
fallible index to the level of general knowledge professed by its
adherents.

When therefore Christian preachers, contemporaries of Vincent of
Beauvais, vied with each other in narrating the most marvellous
stories, the way was, if not prepared, made broader and easier for the
astrologer and magician. Superstition was sanctioned by the sacred
authority of the Church. The ratiocination was d fortiori. If
preachers claiming inspiration of the Holy Ghost pronounce on the

Compare Bartoli, Storia, etc., p. 246. For a general account of Vincent de
Beauvais, though written from the standpoint of Romanist obscurantism, see
the Abbe Bourgeat's Eludes sur Vincent de Beauvais. Paris, 1856.

1 Bartoli, Storia, p. 248. Cf . the same writer's I Precurscri di Minascimento,
p. 82.

* That there are persons who yet admire the pious unquestioning docility of
the so-called Ages of Faith is evident : still it does provoke some little surprise
to find Vincent de Beauvais held up as a pattern of mediaeval enlightenment in
the nineteenth century, and juxtaposited with Anselm and Aquinas. The Abb6
Bourgeat however does this in terms which are worth quotation if only as a
literary curiosity. ( Vincent de Beauvais forme avec saint Ansel em, etc., etc.,
etc., saint Thomas d'Aquine, saint Bonaventure et quelques autres, une
sorte de Pleiade philosophique bien capable de refuter tout ce que Ton a dit
sur lea tenebres du moyen-age, son ignorance, son obscurantisme, sa barbaric. 1
—Andes, etc., p. 10.

General Causes, 37

existence of these monstrosities or wonderful events, it was a plain
testimony to their existence, and a voucher for similar narratives
emanating from less accredited sources. Occasionally some Bishop,
or other hierarchical potentate, might be found who inveighed against
the superstitions practised by Christians in their daily life ; l but in
every such case the fulmination is really directed against their
pagan origin, and is part of the crusade which the Church of tho
middle ages carried on against everything heathen, and which com-
prehended in one indiscriminate anathema the works of Aristotle and
Plato, and the festivities solemnized in honour of Saturn, Pan or
Venus. Indeed, setting apart their pagan affinities, the Church was
by no means anxious to extirpate superstitions which indirectly, if
not immediately, replenished her coffers. Exorcisms e.g. were a far
too fruitful source of income to permit a crusade against ghosts,
daemons, witches and other supernatural disturbers of men's peace.
Nor did the general influence of these beliefs in awakening men's
mental independence — making them accept passively whatever dog-
mas might be submitted to them, and prompting them to find in
the Church a refuge from the malignant influences of Nature — escape
the astute perceptions of mediaeval Romanism. Superstition has
ever been the ally of a corrupt Christianity ; and it need not excite
astonishment that there are still enthusiastic Romanists who look
back with an eye of yearning to those ' Ages of Faith.'

But with all due abatements, the Encyclopaedias of the eleventh and 1/
twelfth centuries denote an advance. Even the crude Eclecticism
which huddled together fact and Action, sacred and secular, divine and
human, authorities of every age and clime in one indiscriminate mass,
was, for the time being, a higher standpoint than that afforded by the
Church. It was a secular horizon of belief which merged Christianity
with the supposed convictions of humanity ; and was so far a rude
acknowledgment of the universality and impartiality of the laws of
the world and the dealings of Providence. It also indicated the
existence and growth of a curiosity from which, notwithstanding its
infirm efforts at starting, much might be expected in the future.
And it demonstrated the existence of an acquisitive power of the
human intellect, now revived for the first time since the decline of
Greek and Roman learning. Men like Vincent of Beauvais were not
satisfied with investigating one department of nature or science.
They comprehended in their scope ' omne scibile ' ' everything
knowable' and thus betrayed their large conceptions of the range of

1 Gomp. St. Eloi's (Minister of King Dagobert and Bishop of Noyon) address
on this subject quoted in Lacroix's Sciences et Lettres du Moyen Age, p. 262.

38 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Nature and Knowledge, as well as of the powers of the human mind. 1
4thly, Although nothing can be more crude or illogical than the
divisions under which the Encyclopaedists detail their erudition, yet
some attempt at classification is made — Vincent of Beauvais e.g.
divides his Speculum into ' Naturale, Doctrinale, Historiale. , Thus we
detect some initiatory attempts at orderly arrangement, without which
indeed all progress in knowledge is impossible.

THE SECULARIZATION OF LITERATURE.

II. Goliardic Poetry.

Another and prior manifestation of the ' Secularization of Litera-
ture ' meets us in the Goliardic Poetry of the eleventh and three follow-
ing centuries. It would perhaps be hardly correct to call the Goliards
Free-thinkers, and yet there is no designation that conveys with
equal distinctness their real attitude to Mediaeval Christianity. They
1 appear to have been/ says Mr. Wright, 2 ' in the clerical order,
somewhat the same class as the jongleurs and minstrels among the
laity — riotous and unthrifty scholars who attended the tables of the
richer ecclesiastics, and gained their living and clothing by practising
the profession of buffoons and jesters/ This was no doubt one part of
their character ; but if we may judge of the class generally, by the
remains of their poetry that have come down to us, it was not the
whole. The Goliards represent various species of reactions from the
ecclesiastical dogma and practice of the middle ages. Against its
Belief they advocate Free-thought. To its asceticism they oppose
naturalism; to its austerity, laxity; to its religion, humanity; to
its excessive ' other-worldliness ' they oppose a ' this-worldliness y
perhaps as excessive. Their poetry is clearly the outcome not of one

1 A curious insight into this mediaeval omniscience is afforded by Picus of
Mirandola's treatise De omni re scibile. It consists of 900 propositions on
every conceivable subject, which he offered to defend against all comers.
With a stretch of generosity only possible in an age of chivalry he further
expressed his willingness to pay the expenses of all antagonists from a distance.

• Poems ascribed to Walter Mapes, Intro., p. 10. These wandering scholars
are amusingly described by a contemporary in the following terms : * Urbes et
orbem circuire solent scholastici, ut ex multis litteris emciantur insani . . .
ecce queerunt clerici Parisii artes liberales, Aureliani auctores, Bononise
codices, Salerni pyxides, Toleti dsemones, et nusquam mores/

Comp. Bartoli, Storia, p. 261. For the derivation of the word * Goliard ' see
the same work, p. 262, note 1.

General Causes. 39

but of many and various tendencies, though converging in the general
direction of liberty, and emancipation from ecclesiastical thraldom.
Besides the burlesques, parodies and extravaganzas in which the
Goliard indulged his favourite rollicking Rabelaisian humour, he also
sang with tenderness and true poetic feeling of Nature, human life,
and love. He thus evinced somewhat of the natural passion and zest
for enjoyment that distinguished Pagandom; and which ipso teste
Ecclesiasticism had not quite obliterated. That specimens of the
Goliardic muse are rare before the tenth century l is only what we
might have expected ; but their rarity is compensated by the complete
freedom from the dominant religionism of the dark ages which they
disclose. In an early specimen of this poetry we have an exquisite
picture of the delights of the spring-tide, conceived in a mood most
antagonistic to ecclesiastical pessimism. 9 The Goliard recounts the
breaking up of winter ice by the soft breezes of spring, the spreading
of new life and verdure over the whole of Nature, the springing up of
flowers manifold in colour and perfume. He expatiates on the new-
born shade of the grove, on the murmuring of brooks, on the singing
of the nightingale, the enamelling of meadows by various coloured
flowers, the delights of walking in the summer shades, and of pluck-
ing the fragrant rose and lily. Nor are there wanting, as naturalistic
pendants to the picture, the delights of human love and feasting, the
worship of Venus and Bacchus. 8 This topic of the annual resurrec-
tion of Nature, together with the relations direct and indirect it bears
to humanity, was a favourite one with the Goliard. That his treat-
ment of it verges occasionally on sensuality is only what we might
expect from the tendency of all reactions to the extreme of antago-
nistic sentiment. Moreover he is frequently a borrower from the
lyric poetry of Antiquity; and his thought as well as his rhythm
sometimes echoes the poems of Horace, Ovid and Catullus. In this
respect the Goliardic poetry may be called the last surviving child of
classical literature, while it is certainly one source of the Proven9al
and chivalresque poetry which succeeded. One effect of its double
affiliation to Heathenism and Christianity is the curious amalgamation
of ' praise of love and wine ' with expressions of religious devotion
which it exemplifies 4 — a feature which we shall find to be common
more or less to all the literature of the Renaissance. With the

1 Bartoli, Storia, p. 260.

1 Bartoli, op. cit., p. 268.

• Bartoli, op. cit., p. 266. Comp. Poems ascribed to Walter Mopes, passim,
See also 'Carminum Resonantium,' specimen in Wright's Early Mysteries,
pp. 114, 115.

4 Comp. Bartoli, Storia, p. 273. Wright's Early Mysteries, p. 120.

40 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

vagrant and half-pagan Goliard however, the naturalism assumes
occasionally a violent and aggressive aspect, as if it were minded to
assert itself offensively against the religious prepossessions of
Christendom. But we shall probably do well not to generalize too
largely from isolated manifestations of feelings which must, on the
hypothesis of men of mediaeval times being like men of other times,
have found occasional expression. Besides which, these songs were
sometimes not only the productions of thgpe who made itinerant
minstrelsy their calling, but were the wild extravaganzas of
mediaeval students, and therefore their pretended devotion to Bacchus
and Venus may have no more exact relation to the general literature
or sentiment of their time, than the drinking songs of students in
later and more civilized periods. But the abatement here suggested
for youthful libertinism cannot be extended to other aspects of
Goliardic poetry. Certainly the freedom which these boisterous
spirits allow themselves in dealing with the beliefs and worship of the
Church is not exceeded, even if it be equalled, by the freest produc-
tions of the Renaissance. The most sacred functions and formulas of
the Church became the objects of impious parodies and burlesques.
They celebrated e.g. masses of drunkards and gluttons, they com-
posed parodies of the creed, the Lord's Prayer, and portions of the
Gospel. 1 But it may be doubted whether the attempts of the
Goliard- 1 - offensive as they are to us — were likely to excite horror
among his contemporaries. The neutral territory dividing sacred
from profane was then, as we know, not very carefully marked out.
The Church herself, in her miracle-plays, trespassed far beyond the
border which modern sentiment has prescribed for irreverence and
impiety. Moreover, it was not so much Christianity in its earliest
and simplest form, as in its " counterfeit resemblance " of Romanism,
that roused the ire of our errant free-singer. The unholy greed of the
Great Babylon, where everything is sold and bought, is a favourite
topic of his muse. The lines : —

4 Roma caput mundi est
Sed nil capit mundum
Quod pendit a capite
Totum est immundum.' *

disclose his general sentiment on this fruitful tneme. Nor does he
spare the chief administrators of the Papal tyranny. The lash of his

1 Bartoli, op. cit., pp. 276-277.

1 These lines are from the remarkable poem ' Golias in Romanam Curiam.'
Poems ascribed to Walter Mapes, p. 87.

General Causes. 41

eatire and invective is applied without stint not only to the Pope, but
to cardinals, bishops, abbots and monks, especially when the last-
named are Cistercians. 1 ' It is worthy of note/ says Professor Bartoli, 2
'to see these obscure poets of the twelfth century raising the
cry of revolt against that long-continued tyranny over the human
conscience, against the ambition that aspired to universal sovereignty.
It is inspiriting to find that tradition of holy indignation l against
the implacable foe of civilization, and to find it in the Saturnian Era
of Romanism, in those centuries to which many, even to-day, revert
with longing as the happy ages of Faith.' And if this sacred zeal
for Freedom was occasionally tainted by licence, we may remember
the provocations the freer thinkers and Reformers of that time were
perpetually receiving; nor must we forget — what the remains of
Goliard poetry amply attest — the distinction that existed between
the various members of a class whose chief common attribute was
Bohemianism and literary vagabondage. The vehement language
common to the more thoughtful as well as to the wilder Goliard was
justified in the former case) by the corruptions he saw around him.
One of these enounces a plea for the severity of his satire which must
be pronounced irrestible : —

* When I see evil men in their riches delighting,
When vice is triumphant, and virtue needs righting,
With— lust and not love men to marriage inciting,
How can I help a satire inditing ? *

.The Goliards were thus in many rgspects precursors of the Protestant
Reformers ; and this accounts, as has been observed, 4 for the popularity
of their poetry in the sixteenth century. Without pretending to a high
moral and religious standpoint, for which their general character and
irregular life unfitted them, they possessed enough common sense,
and a sufficiently acute perception of human nature and the essentials
of religion, to impel them against the organized hypocrisy and am-
bition of Romanism. They were not preachers of the Newer Faith;
but, in their r6le of popular satirists, they aided its advent.

I have already remarked the devotion of the Goliard to classical
antiquity. Their semi-Pagan instincts brought them into closer
union with the freer spirits of the Roman Empire than with the
authorities of the Church. They therefore contributed materially to

1 Com p. Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, p. 54.

• Storia, etc., p. 281.

• Poena attributed to Walter Mapes, p. 153.

4 Mr. Wright's Preface to Poems of Walter Mapes, p. xxiv.

42 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

accelerate the Renaissance, considered as a secular movement of pure
Humanism. Together with the old moralities in which the lives and
adventures of Pagan heroes were ' moralized ' for the instruction of
the people, their poetry, sang or recited in taverns, at fairs and
markets, and generally in places of public concourse, 1 was a chief
source of popular information as to the personages of Antiquity.
They took as their themes episodes of the Iliad, the adventures and
death of Hector, the fall of Troy, or they recounted the adventures of
JEneas, the misfortunes of Dido and other favourite classical stories.
The Gods of Olympus were often nearer to these wild spirits than the
invisible Deity of Christianity, or perhaps it would be truer to say
that they did not discriminate between one and the other. They
saw no impropriety in recognizing the Divine omniscience by a
heathen formula — cor patet Jovif and were conscious of no incon-
gruity in identifying the exploits of Zeus, or the labours of Herakles,
with events in the life of Christ. They incited each other to drink
by the phrase imitemur superos. They saluted their mistresses by
heathen names — Dido, Niobe, Helen, Venus, etc. They were ready in
the application of Pagan instances to illustrate the events of their
own time, and manifested much wit and shrewdness in the process. 3
Their undisguised heathen proclivities laid them open to the satire
afterwards lavished on the Humanists of the Renaissance.

( For their God they all take Bacchus,
And for Mark they all read Flaccus,
In lieu of Paul they Virgil choose,
And for Matthew I^ucan use.' *

i

We may therefore date from the Goliards that confused blending of
Heathen with Christian tradition which is so characteristic of the
Renaissance, and which distinguishes Christian Free-thought down to
the commencement of the eighteenth century. The Church, as may

1 The practice of singing verses in public was not confined to itinerant
clerics, minstrels and jongleurs. As late as the sixteenth century there are
woodcuts representing Lorenzo di Medici himself singing to the citizens of
Florence.

• Poems ascribed to Walter Mapes, p. 74.

8 Compare e.g. these lines on the rapacity of the Papal Curia : —

4 Jupiter dum orat
Danem, frustra laborat
Sed earn deflorat
Auro dum se colorat. • . • '

Bart., op. cit., p. 288.

* Bart., op. cit., p. 286.

General Causes. 43

be supposed, did not regard with favour the irregular lives and law-
less sentiments of her vagrant children. It was not so much their
lax morality as their free-thought, and their invectives against Papal
hypocrisy and corruption, that gave offence. They were accord-
ingly often denounced by the Romish hierarchy with the customary
vituperation and anathemas. But little recking abuse which their
disdain of the ( Great Babylon ' induced them to treat with scant
respect, these merry minstrels still pursued their vocation, singing of
life and love, of Nature and freedom, of joy and feasting whenever
they could obtain an audience. The residences of free-thinking
cardinals and jovial bishops and abbots, rather than the castles of
feudal barons, constituted their chief ' houses of ,call.' In the former,
they were certain of finding circles by which their caricature of
monkish Latinity, their classical allusions, their puns and jests were
sure of appreciation, as well as of their usual wage of cast-off cloth-
ing and abundance of food and drink. Their employment as popular
and lay minstrels began to fail when their language — the colloquial
Latin of the middle ages — was transmuted into the dialects which
gave birth to the Romance languages ; though their songs still con-
tinued to enliven many a convent refectory, and to amuse the guests
of cardinals and prelates for some centuries afterwards.

It would take us too far afield to consider all the relations that
exist between the Goliard poetry, especially as to its tone and
spirit, and subsequent kindred developments of the secularization of
literature. The chief ' tendencies that distinguish it, its exuberant
naturalism, its mocking spirit, its love of jesting and profane raillery
are found to characterize succeeding outgrowths of Romance Litera-
ture. The * Chansons de Gestcf and 'Poems of Adventure' of the
jongleur, the Fabliaux and Conies of the earliest French novelists,
and, somewhat later, the prose Novelists of Italy are all permeated by
the Goliard spirit of Free-thought. The Jongleur and Fabulist carry
on the warfare with sacerdotal corruption and hypocrisy, and the
free criticism of Romish dogmas initiated by the Goliards, some of
them assuming not only their spirit and language, but the mask of
their semi-clerical callings. These singers and contours burlesque
the offices, and parody the formularies, of the Church. They ridicule
excommunication, mock at the doctrines of Purgatory and Hell-fire,
and view with suspicion every dogma and function which the Church
has made a source of revenue. Some idea of the extent of their free-
dom may be obtained by an examination of the works of Rutebceuf, a
Trouvere of the thirteenth century. This writer attacks in a mingled
spirit of hardihood and mockery most of the beliefs and preposses-
sions of his time, Rome is saluted as the fountain of all evils ; —

44 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

' De Borne vient li max qui les vertus asome

*****

Rome, qui deust estre de nostre loi la fonde
Symonie, avarice, et tos max i abonde : l

He satirizes Pope, Cardinals and Friars, depicts the irregular life,
the insatiable greed and dishonesty of the clergy generally, reveals
some curious details as to the working of Romanist dogmas, e.g.
Prayers to the Virgin, 8 ridicules and burlesques Belief in Purgatory
and Prayers for the dead, 8 throws the cold water of common sense
upon the Crusades and exposes the mischiefs, national, social and
religious, that attended those holy enterprizes. 4 Rutebceuf, though a
remarkable writer, is only one of a considerable number of Free
singers who opposed themselves, in a spirit of liberty, not unalloyed
with licence, to the beliefs, usages and preconceptions of mediaeval
Christianity ; and whose works are even now only beginning to be
appreciated in their true relation to European culture. You will not
need any description of the purport of the better known of these free
legends, those e.g. of Reynard the Fox, 6 and the Romance of the
Rose. 6 They are really popular satires on the beliefs of Romanism.
They are exponents of a late-born but widely diffused sentiment
which recognizes the conflicting interests of humanity and sacer-
dotalism, and which dares prognosticate the victory of the former
over the latter. By these writers all beliefs and usages of the time
are presented with their ' seamy side ' outwards, and are regarded as
fitting objects of criticism, possibly also of ridicule. They are, as I
have said, legitimate successors, in everything but language, of the
Goliards, and they contemplate the fabric of mediaeval thought from
a Goliardic standpoint. Nor are numerous successors of these free-
spirits wanting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the
latter indeed the whole of the popular literature — the ballads,

1 (Euv. Comp., ed. Jubinal, vol. i. p. 288.

* (Euv., vol. i. p. 829.

* ' (Test li Testament de VAneS (Euv., ed. Jubinal, i. p. 278.

4 c La Desputizons dou CroisU et dou Descroiziif. i. p. 124. The Cathari and
Waldensians were vehemently opposed to the Crusades, and regarded their
sanction by the Popes as a deadly sin. D'Argentre, Coll Judic., i. 57.

5 Comp. Bartoli, Storia, etc., p. 808.

* M. Martin calls John de Meung the principal author of this Romance,
1 tin Rabelais du Moyen Age,' and adds, ' on pent dire qu'il depasse d'avance
Rabelais dans la Negation, car le cynicism est chez lui moindre dans le
langage et plus radical dans le fond, et il est loin d 'avoir au meme degre que
Rabelais, ces entrailles humaines, cette philosophic de bon coeur et de grand
sens, qui rachete la licence du cure de Meudon.'— 2Ti*t. France, iv. p. 574.

General Causes. 45

satires, tales, burlesques and farces — of France, Germany, Italy and
England are quite permeated by this free spirit, and enamoured of its
free expression. Rabelais may, in tone and method, claim to be the
last of the Ooliards, while the most remarkable of the later writings
animated by its spirit were the famous 'Li terse obscurorum Virorum.'
The Ooliardic poetry belongs especially to the Church. Jt is the
composition of men who if not clerics themselves were hangers on to
the skirts of Prelates and Cardinals. Their muse employs the
language of the Church. It is the latest literary offshoot of colloquial
Latinity, before the birth of the Romance languages. But this event
introduces us to another phase of the ( Secularization of Literature.'
I mean that which we have in Provencal Literature.

THE SECULARIZATION OF LITERATURE.

III. Provencal Poetry.

Provencal Poetry, as a whole, may be regarded as the combined
product of two influences that came into operation in the eleventh
century. The first being the rise of chivalry, the second the rapid
transmutation, in the South of France, of low mediaeval Latin into the
Langue d'Oc. Chivalry has often been called the poetry of Feudalism ;
but it is not an essential attribute of the Feudal system, nor is it
contemporaneous with it in origin. The humanizing effects of loyalty
to duty, pity for the weak, generosity and unselfishness which it
inculcated, begin to be especially marked in the twelfth century. 1 In
its origin, and many of its qualities, Chivalry may claim to be an
offshoot of Arab culture and literature. In fact there are two sources
or two ages of European chivalry ; the first before and independent
of the Crusades, derived from peaceful intercourse with Arabs settled
in Spain and the South of France and Italy, as well as from com-
mercial intercourse with those of the Levant and the north coast of
Africa. The second, after the Crusades, bearing the impress of those
expeditions and diffusing the gentleness, magnaminity and culture
derived from association with the soldiers and courtiers of Saladin.
Nor were the newer refining influences imparted by the now civilized
Saracen, whether Eastern or Western, exclusively of a social kind.
The Poetry and Literature of the Arabs found entrance into Courts
and Literary circles in France and Southern Italy, just as their
philosophy and medical science obtained a hearing in mediaeval
schools and universities. Of this popular Arabic Literature,

1 Comp. Littre, Hut. de la Langue Fran., i. p. 178.

46 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

diffused as all such literature must be before the age of printing
by wandering minstrels (raouis), the two themes were love and
warlike deeds. Just as the Jongleur and Troubadour sang in the
'Baron's hall, or to a street crowd, their romance of love and heroism,
so did the errant Saracen singer dilate on the same topics in the tent
of the Bedouin Sheik, or in the homes of opulent Moorish merchants.
Thus both the taste for chivalrous romance, and the customary
method of its gratification, are legacies derived in a great measure
from Saracen settlers in Europe ; and the poetry of the Troubadours,
setting aside certain peculiarities of taste, turns of imagination which
are referrible to difference of race, thought and religion, is really
modelled on that of the Arabs. 1 Nor is it only a resemblance of
literary product, and its diffusion by the same method of wandering
minstrels, that here meets us. The style and rhythm of the Trouba-
dour are copies from his Arab teacher, and even the instrument on
which the Jongleur and Troubadour accompanied their songs, was
the three-stringed lyre which his Arab brother-singer 9 had long
employed for the self-same purpose.

It will result from these remarks that the main sources of
Provencal Literature are to be found in the two great settlements of
Saracens in Europe : first in Spain and the South of France in the
seventh and eighth centuries, the second in Sicily and Calabria, in the
ninth and tenth centuries. 3 Italy lay between these two sources of
Arab enlightenment, but it was from the latter that she acquired her
• earliest leavening of Provencal Poetry. From the Norman Kingdom
of Sicily, permeated by the Saracenic civilization of the conquered
race, a continuous stream set in of Troubadours and their character-
istic minstrelsy towards the Courts and towns of South Italy. This
southern stream was met, somewhat later, by a northern influx which
had its source in Provence and the country round Toulouse. The
latter was greatly increased by the nefarious crusade which Innocent
III. directed against the peaceable, liberal and comparatively
speaking cultured inhabitants of South France, which had the effect
of driving the Troubadours from their native home, and dispersing

1 Sismondi, De la Litterature du Midi, etc., vol. i. chap. 8. This, it may be
added, is the usual theory which more recent French historians seem inclined
to discard, though less on historical grounds than from a natural but not
commendable wish to preserve the indigenous character of Provencal poetry.
Comp. e.g. M. C. Aubertin, Hist, de la Langue etdela Litterature Fran^aieee au
Moyen Age, vol. i. p. 296.

1 Bartoli / Primi due Secoli, etc., p. 47 and notes.

* For an enumeration of the advantages conferred by the Saracenic invasion
on Sicily and Calabria, comp. Sedillot, Hut. Gen. dee Arabee, i. p. 80S.

General Causes. 47

them through the northern half of Italy. Not that these two streams
of Provencal Literature exhaust all the sources of chivalrous and
literary culture which Italy possessed in the eleventh and twelfth
century. In middle Italy also, the chansons dc geste, the deeds of
chivalry, the legend of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table,
the prowess of Charlemagne's Paladins were themes which itinerant
minstrels sang everywhere, both in the private houses of the wealthy
and to crowds assembled in the streets. 1 Later on, with the revival
of classical literature, these popular singers added to their repertoire
stories of ancient mythology; and the old Homeric rhapsodist who
sang the anger of Achilles and the death of Hector 2 to the Hellenic
tribes 600 B.C. seemed to have come to life again in mediaeval Italy
from his sleep of eighteen centuries.

Thus in its very origin, Provencal Poetry may be said to have been
pledged to a certain freedom of thought and liberty of utterance.
Forcibly stimulated, if not altogether engendered, by Arab literature
and Mahometan culture, it found its chosen abode among Courts and
peoples whose literary, political and religious sympathies all pointed
in the direction of Freedom, and aversion to the tyranny of Rome..
The themes it discussed contravened directly or indirectly all the
religious traditions of mediaeval Christianity. Its gay science (el gai
saber) was et nomine et re opposed to the gloom and asceticism of
mediaeval Christianity. Its celebration of chivalry and its carnal
prowess was a tacit reproach to the passive virtues of mediaeval
saints. Its stress upon the concerns of this life conflicted with the
excessive but simulated other-worldliness of the Papacy. The
sense of mental independence and individual self-assertion which
every free literature naturally generates was quite antagonistic to the
helpless imjbecility which the Romish priesthood laboured to induce.
Remembering the combined superstition and corruption of the Church,
we can imagine the new life, the unrestrained joyousness, the sense
of freedom, which the tendencies and indirect influences, more than
the overt teachings, of Provencal Literature served to diffuse. A
charming picture of the popularity of the Troubadours and the reign

1 Comp. Littre, Hut, de la Langue Fran., i. p. 176.

• Poggio, in his Facetue (Edition Liseux, vol. i. p. 182), has an absurd story
of a man who after listening intently day after day to an Improvisator
engaged in declaiming the deeds of Hector, was greatly pained to hear him
announce that on the morrow he would conclude his recitations with the death
of Hector. By means of bribes he contrived to postpone time after time the
death of so brave a warrior. But his means being at last exhausted, the
Improvisator pursued his theme, the poor man accompanying the recitation
with tears and groans.

48 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

of song and music in Provence we have in a few sentences of Raimon
Vidal's Treatise on metrical art, which I transcribe from Mr. Hueffer's
work on the Troubadours : ! — ' All Christendom/ he says, ' Jews and
Saracens, the emperor, kings, dukes, counts and viscounts, commandeis,
vassals and other knights, citizens and peasants, tall and little, daily
give their minds to singing and verse-making, by either singing
themselves or listening to others. No place is so deserted or out of
the way, that, as long as men inhabit it songs are not sung either by
single persons or by many together; even the shepherds in the
mountains know of no greater joy than song. All good and evil
things in the world are made known by the Troubadours.' The last
phrase indicates the peculiar combination of bard, musician, litera-
teur, chronicler, newsman which were bound up in the calling of a
Troubadour, and which made his teaching a kind of secular education
for the people. But the Church soon grew sus picious of a culture
that did not emanate from herself, did not speak her language, 8
express her thoughts, or adopt her teachers, and was assumed to be
contaminated with the association and sympathy of Jews, Turks,
Infidels and Heretics. The Troubadours in truth were free-thinkers.
Not that they directly opposed or in most cases even criticized the
dogmatic stru cture of the Church ; but they ignored them, and that
of itself was suspicious. Besides which, their thought and teaching
pointed, as we have seen, in» a direction diametrically opposed to
sacerdotalism. No more than this was needed to alarm the bjgpJbty
and rouse the tyranny of Borne. To what purpose was it to wage
war on infidels beyond seas when those near home were allowed to go
free ? Accordingly Innocent III. proclaimed that nefarious crusade —
one of the worst of the many outrage s which Romish Christianity
has perpetrated against humanity and civilization. The sacred
symbol of the cross — so often arrayed against the spirit and teach-
ing of the crucified — was uplifted in this unholy mission, and the
pledge of divine love and spiritual freedom, was degraded into an
emblem of inhuman savagery, foul lust, and revolting cruelty.

The crusade against the Provencals concerns us only in its relation
to Free-thought. We may therefore pass over that horrible picture
of religious fanaticism — the bloodthirsty barbarity of Simon de Mont-
fort — the ruthless massacre of whole towns and villages 8 — the
contemplation of churches whose pavements were covered knee-deep

1 P. 12a

1 The use of the Provencal language was forbidden to students by a Bull of
Pope Innocent IV. in 1245.
8 Coznp. on this subject H. Martin's HUt. de France > voL iv. p. 32.

General Causes. 49

with the blood of the unarmed crowd — most of them women and
children — who had vainly sought refuge in them — the numberless
detailed scenes of spoliation and depravity perpetrated by the
1 soldiers of the cross ' — the heartless cynicism and inhumanity with
which they avowed their shameless deeds — the pitiful silence,
desolation and misery that followed the footsteps of the Papal he ll-
hounds — the transmutation of a lovely champaign country, redolent
of prosperity, quiet felicity and rural beauty, to a wild desert,
defouled with the unburied corpses of its peaceable inhabitants, and
with the blood-stained ashes of their once happy homes. The
crusade I have hinted, f was really directed against Free-thought,
secular learning and enlightenment. These and not the dual Deities
of the Manichseans, nor the peculiar but innocent fancies of the
Gatharists stirred the }iol y zeal of Innocent, and the inhuman trucu-
lence of his worthy lieutenant Simon de Montfort. But like all such
outrages on civilization the attempt recoiled on its perpetrators. No
doubt Provencal Literature was in a great measure extinguished.
The language of its war songs and love ditties gradually ceased to
exist, though this was in part a natural operation dependent on the
laws which govern the growth and decay of languages. The happy
home of the Troubadours was demolished. Its laws and customs
completely reversed. Instead of the mild sway of the Counts of
Toulouse, 1 the Inquisition erected its detestable tribunal in that
town, from henceforth to be distinguished in history as the ferocious
persecutor of all heretics. But on the other hand the event con-
tributed to disperse the Troubadours and their art throughout
Europe. Those who escaped the £apal butchery added a new theme
to their songs of chivalry. They described in words of glowing
indignation the character of this peculiar propaganda of ' Peace on
earth, good will to men.' Professor Settembrini, in his ' Lectures
on Italian Literature ' 8 quotes a Serventes or poetical diatribe by
one of these minstrels in which Borne is anathematized with a hearti-
ness of vituperation that recalls her own fulminations. Here is a
specimen : —

1 No wonder, Rome, that the world is in error, because thou hast
imbrued this age in affliction and in war, and by thee both merit and
pity are dead and buried. Rome, thou deceiver, source and root of
all evils, by thee the good king of England was betrayed.'

1 On the character of Raimund VI., oorap. Martin, Histaire de France, iv. p.
19.

• Vol. i. p. 56. Comp. the mo9t damning testimony of a Troubadour as to the
iniquitous character of the crusade contained in M. Fauriel's Histoire de la
Crusade centre Ue Albigeois, etc, Par. 1837.

VOL. I. E

I

50 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

1 Rome thou deceiver, Avarice blinds thee. Thou fleeces t thy flock
while still living. may the Holy Spirit that took human flesh
listen to my prayers, and break thy beak, because thou art false and
villainous to us and to the Greeks/

' Eome, thou devourest the flesh and the bones of thy silly victims,
and leadest the blind with thyself into the ditch/ etc.

1 The fire of hell await thee, Rome, 7 etc., etc.

Most of these expatriated minstrels turned their faces to North
Italy, and found a warm welcome in the Free towns and in the
houses of the nobility and opulent citizens. There they both kept
alive the story of Roman tyranny and barbarity, and aided in the
diffusion of the freer culture that was then extending itself from one
end of Italy to the other. It would indeed be difficult to overstate the
debt, which early Italian Literature owes to that of the Provencals.
Setting aside the language, all the earlier mental products of Italy, up
to the time of Dante, are hardly more than reproductions of the Poetry
of the Troubadours. Their themes, modes of thought and diction,
their rhythm -and style are copied with extreme, and even servile,
punctiliousness. The general subject of these literary firstf raits,
which are themselves Sicilian, and hence connected geographically
with one main source of chivalresque poetry, was that which especially
ocoupied the pens and lyres of the Troubadours, viz., Woman's Love.
This harmonised with the new Cultus of the Virgin, which since the
time of St. Bernard had taken such vigorous root in the religious
sentiment of Catholicism, and which forms in reality the devotional
side of chivalry- Thus the lays of the Troubadour expressed with
equal enthusiasm either the charms of his frail earthly mistress or
the physical beauty with which his imagination invested the
Madonna. If the intimate relation of such divergent objects of
adoration sometimes imparted a laxity of thought and sensuousness
of expression to what was a religious feeling, it also had the effect
of directing into human channels sentiments hitherto regarded
as exclusively divine. It therefore aided in the great task of the
Renaissance — that of humanizing mediaeval Theology. The result of
this process, both in itself and in elevating to an idealistic extreme
the eharms of womanhood, we shall see further when we come to
Dante and Petrarca.

An incidental proof of the effect of Provencal Poetry in advancing
Free-thought is lastly to be found in its continual association with
all the most progressive culture of. the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Troubadours, Jongleurs, Improvisatore, were continual attendants on
learned Princes, and the companions of learned men. In the Court of
that enlightened sovereign Frederick Barbarossa — the most remark-

General Causes. 51

able example of Free-thought and Religious Tolerance in the age
preceding the Renaissance. — Troubadours and their productions
occupied a prominent position. As professors of belles Lettres, they
intermingled as a relaxing and recreative element among the arid
studies and avocations of the mathematicians, Aristotelians and
physicians who frequented that Court. They formed part, too, of the
personal entourage of that benign and tolerant prince William II. of
Sicily. They were also attendants on the petty Moorish Princes in
Spain, and associated on terms of equality with the mathematicians
and philosophers those liberal potentates fostered. 1 The marks of
this learned intercourse are still traceable in the remains of Provencal
Poetry. Hence while that Poetry constituted the popular Literature
of Italy before the birth of any indigenous product of the kind, it
prepared the way for and stimulated the growth of that native
learning. It also liberalized to a certain extent the culture and
erudition, and helped to give lightness and flexibility to the style of
philosophers and men of learning : in short, without its humanizing
and Free-thinking influences, Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, the
noblest products of Italian culture would have been inpossibilities.

THE SECULARIZATION OF LITERATURE.

IV. Mysteries and Moralities.

A certain secondary influence on the Secularization of Literature
which prepared the way for Italian Free-thought must, in the next
place, be assigned to the mysteries, moralities and general scenic
representations which in some form or other go far back into
mediaeval times. 8

The early Church in its warfare against Paganism could hardly
have omitted the Roman theatre from the scope of its animosity.
Indeed few aspects of Heathenism in the latter days of the Roman
Empire merited more the reprobation of Christian teachers ; and cer-
tainly few things contributed more to the moral degradation which
marks so profoundly the decadence of the Roman power, than the
fondness of the people for theatrical exhibition and spectacular
shows. Hence we cannot feel surprised that Tertullian, Augustine,
Basil launched out into bitter invectives against the Theatre, that
they bestowed on it the appellations 'Sacrarium Veneris/ 'caveas

1 Comp. Sismondi, LUterature du Midi, etc, vol. i. chap. iii.
* Some of the earliest mysteries date so far hack as the end of the fifth
century. Comp. Jubinal MysUres incdit*, 1837, passim.

52 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

turpissimas Diaboli.' * This strenuous opposition of the Church com-
bined with other causes political and social, especially the disturbed
condition of Italy from the fifteenth century onwards, gradually
effected the extinction of the old theatrical tradition derived from
Greece and Rome. The precise time when this took place is differently
stated. A French critic, M. Charles Louandre, who has carefully
investigated the matter, places it about 700 a.d. But it is easier to
repress any specific manifestation of the natural instincts of civilized
humanity than to destroy the sources whence it springs. Accord-
ingly we find that long before the disappearance in Italy of all
interest in and knowledge of the classic drama, rudimentary modes
of scenic representation had sprung up within the Church itself,
forming indeed a portion of her ordinary worship. I allude to the
ancient Mysteries and Moralities. The Mysteries were, in the first
instance, mere paraphrases in dialogue either of Scriptural narratives
or ecclesiastical legends. They were unaccompanied either by
dramatic action or scenic display. Their sole office was to pourtray
more vividly, by the aid of two or three interlocutors, some scene in
the Bible, or in the lives of saints. Later on they developed in the
direction both of scenic representation and of dramatic action and
dialogue. The great events in the life of Christ came to be set forth
in a picturesque form, sometimes in dumb show, at other times, with
the accompaniment of narrative and dialogue. Nor were these his-
torical representations restricted to sacred narratives : sometimes the
legends of Pagandom were employed to teach moral lessons after the
manner of the Gospel Parables ; and when the moral was inculcated
as a distinct and permanent part of the representation the piece was
called a Morality. Allegory and symbolism are indirect modes of
thought and teaching common to all imaginative races. In early
Christianity they constituted, as we know, prepotent influences in
its literature and worship. Allegorical personages such as Vice,
Virtue, Indolence, Luxury, etc. were employed at a very early period
in the histrionic attempts of the Church, from whence they passed
into the initial stages of every drama in Europe. The indirect
methods of allegory, combined with freedom in its application, enabled
the Church to utilize, for her own purposes, histories and legends,
perhaps of popular interest, which in their prima facie acceptation
were worse than useless. Thus the events of the Old Testament of
whatever character were Christianized by Allegory. Notwithstanding
the strain sometimes put upon them, considered as historical narra-
tives, or their obvious distortion, regarded as stories of questionable

1 Oomp. Bartoli, IJPrimi due Secdi, etc., p. 174, and Storia, etc., p. 200.

General Causes. 53

morality, they were rendered not only innocuous, but improving
and edifying by being run into the symbolical moulds of the Church.
A collection of the fantastic adaptations by which the events of
Jewish history were twisted into types and emblems of Christianity
would be a literary curiosity. 1 Nor was it only the events of the
Bible that were thus treated. Those of heathen antiquity received a
similar adaptation. All the symbols, persons and events of Greek
and Roman history were types of corresponding personages, etc.
described in Sacred Literature. Thus, to quote Professor Bartoli, 2
1 The Peacock, the bird sacred to Juno, employed on Roman monu-
ments to signify Apotheosis, expressed on Christian tombs the immor-
tality of the soul. The Phoenix typified the Resurrection. In the
catacombs of St. Calixtus, Orpheus playing on the lyre is a symbol
of Christ, who with the beauty of His words draws all hearts after
Him. In another place Ganymede and the Rape of Proserpine
symbolize premature death. Starting from the same idea, the
Saturnian age found its scriptural approximation in Eden, Deucalion
in Noah, Eurydice- in Lot, the travels of ^Eneas in those of Moses,
Cecrops in Abel, Ajax in Jacob, Troy in Egypt.' Nor did the
ingenuity of Christian teachers stop here. As if they prided them-
selves on the transmutation to their own purposes of unlikely or
obstinate materials, they subjected even 'Ovid's Metamorphoses/
to a metamorphosis as great as any of them, and interpreted the
legends of Pliny and equally veracious stories from other sources
to purposes of Christian edification. Moreover the moralities drama-
tized within the Church took also the didactic form of collections of
legends. Of these moral stories the popular collection in the four-
teenth century was the Qesta Romanorum y in which heathen legends
of every degree of questionable truth and morality are carefully alle-
gorized in order to subserve the interests of the Church. No doubt
these moralities, whether representations or didactic stories, operated
indirectly in a manner different from that in which the Church
intended to apply them. If they served the interests of dogmatic
belief by presenting in a vivid form the teachings of the clergy, they
also diffused among the people some rudiments of Classical Literature,
and thus helped to prepare the way for its revival during the Re-
naissance.

The stage of culture in the mediaeval Church which I have thus
glanced at, and which is marked by mysteries, allegorical shows,
and moralities, is perfectly inexplicable on general grounds apart from

1 See some extravagances of allegorical exegesis in the middle ages collected
by Mr. Mullinger in his School* of Charles the Great, pp. 90, 186.
* Storia, etc., p. 85.

54 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

the circumstances of the case : I mean the state of general knowledge
among the poorer classes, the fewness of their opportunities for
increasing it. Every- historical religion has in its very nature and
origin dramatic elements. Every human life, every actual event
may be made to assume, in its relation or commemoration, a represen-
tative character; though a strong tendency to histrionic display as
part of religious worship will invariably be accompanied by a
diminished appreciation of the ethical and spiritual elements in a
given religion. The ordinary, and especially the Eucharistic, services
of all Christian churches have necessarily much in them that is
symbolical and dramatic. The Mass has been termed ' the Great
Drama of Christendom,' and there is no doubt that in the relation
and sequence of its different parts we have all the main features
of a dramatic performance. We cannot therefore wonder that, in
the mediaeval Church, it was found expedient to resort often to repre-
sentation rather than narration, and to attract by scenic display
worshippers who in general culture were not far above the level of
children.

The exact line between the ' mysteries ' and ' moralities,' on the
*one hand, and miracle-plays on the other, is difficult to draw ; it may
even be doubted whether in the middle ages any great distinction
existed between them. One probable difference may perhaps have
been that the plays had more of the dramatic element in their con-
struction, and were generally, though not exclusively, drawn from
sacred sources. Of course with the advance of the histrionic art
the moral of the story or representation became more and more
interwoven into the structure ofthe piece, and was evolved by the
action of the performers, or the denoument of the plot, so that a
separate enunciation of its didactic purpose became needless. Thus
the transition of the Morality to the more developed form of the
Miracle-play was like the transformation in the office of the Greek
Chorus when it gradually lost its explanatory function, and became
nothing more than a half-religious comment upon the transactions
and characters of the drama. Moreover the miracle play, like
the mystery, was often a tableau vivant^ though with a more elabo-
rate dialogue, of some of the sacred scenes connected with the life
of Christ, or of the Apostles and saints of the Church, such as you
may see on the festivals of the Church at Naples and most other
Italian towns at the present day. 1 They were both written and

1 The ' Mystery of the Nativity '—the ancestor of the Feast of * Gesu
Bambino ' with its 'presepe ' and other accessories so delightful to the children
of South Italy in the present day, goes far back to mediaeval times, probably
to the sixth century.

General Causes. 55

played by the clergy ; though they frequently treated of profane
subjects, and that too after a manner neither Christian nor edifying.

What is remarkable in the development of these plays, and what
we have to note for our purpose, is their participation in the Free-
thought which marks other departments of intellectual activity in the
eleventh and two following centuries. The secularization of the old
religious drama is indeed a process pretty distinctly marked. First
we observe, interwoven into the sacred representation, a certain ad-
mixture of Pagan elements, and we find a growing increase of allusions
to heathen characters, divinities and events. In a miracle play, ejg.
of tho twelfth century, we have songs in celebration of Venus and of
Love. Representations of a half-clerical half-secular character began
to be observed, in which the burlesque element preponderated to such
an extent as almost to render them caricatures of religious ceremonies.
Such are, e.g. the election and celebration of Boy Bishops, the Feast
of Apes, 1 the Feast of Fools. The dialogue also becomes more elabo-
rate and free, the dramatic action assumes additional complexity.
Laymen begin to take part as characters in the sacred dramas, pro^
bably also in their composition. And — a still more significant^ token
of transition — the language of the old mysteries was being changed.
At as early a date as the eleventh (perhaps the tenth) century 8
we have a % mystery, that of the wise and foolish virgins, in which
Latin, Provencal and French are simultaneously used. 8 It is obvious
that the Theatre like other forms of culture was now gradually
separating itself from the Church, it was starting on the course of
freedom and independence which of right pertains to it. 4 Accord-
ingly we find, as the next step in the transition, mysteries and
nominally sacred dramas represented outside the church. The em-
ployment of profane languages such as French or Italian also con-
tinues to increase. In the twelfth century we have a mystery on the
Resurrection which is entirely in French ; and another El mistero

1 On this mystery, comp. Hone's Ancient Mysteries, p. 161 and Du Cange, Gloss.,
art. Kalendcc. The rubrical directions for its conclusion were that the priest
instead of the usual ( Ite missa est. 1 should bray thrice, and the people instead
of 'Deo Gratias 1 should thrice answer Huiham, Huiham, Huiham. See
Bartoli, I Primi due Secoli, etc., p. 182, N. 4 : Hone, loc. cit., p. 165.

1 Comp. Wright's Early Mysteries, Pref. p. xiii.

• For this mystery see Wright's Early Mysteries, p. 55, and comp. Viollet le
Due, Ancien Thiatre Francais, Intro, p. viL ; Prof. Bartoli, Storia, etc., p. 228,
and I Primi due Secoli, p. 175, note 4.

4 The Church began to forbid the participation of the clergy both in the
representations in churches, and in the mummings at festivals as early as
the beginning of the twelfth century. See some interesting remarks on this
point in Wright's Early Mysteries, Pref. p. 12.

56 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

de I08 Reyes Magos in Castilian. These were probably performed
outside churches. Certainly in the next century, 1244, we have
indisputable evidence of a mystery in a highly developed form,
having for its subject the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, being
performed in a meadow near Padua. We need not follow the course
of dramatic development any further, inasmuch as in the following
centuries we have abundant examples of a purely secular drama.
Farces, moralities, burlesques were both written and acted by lay-
men. Guilds and companies of players, sometimes clerical sometimes
lay, were now organized. These contributed much to the artistic
development of the drama, as well as to its enfranchisement from
ecclesiastical domination. Some surprise has been evinced at the
scarcity of examples of the secular drama before the fourteenth century,
contrasted with their abundance in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies. But the truth is, as M. Viollet le Due has remarked,' they
probably existed but are now lost. Even the large number of Dra-
matic pieces belonging to the fifteenth and succeeding centuries —
now diligently collected and forming of themselves no inconsiderabe
literature — are evidently less than a tithe of those then extant.

The effect of these various dramatic representations in expressing
and popularizing Free-thought during the century preceding the
Renaissance is undeniable. Even while the Theatre was an appanage
of theX3hurch, when the mysteries, moralities and miracle plays were
both written and performed by the clergy, when their representation
formed part of the most sacred offices of the Church, there was no
small amount of freedom both of speech and thought in the perform-
ances. Venerated saints, angels arid martyrs, nay, even Deity Him-
self, were addressed in terms of familiarity bordering on irreverence.
Naturally with the further development of the drama and the
combined influences of Free-thought operating in other directions,
this freedom became still more marked, and in some cases assumes
a repulsive aspect. The removal of the miracle-plays outside the
church walls, the increased part taken by laymen in their composi-
tion and representation, served to intensify these tendencies until
at the latter part of the Renaissance, and during the Protestant
Reformation, the Theatre becomes almost the chief medium for the
popular expression of Free-thought, and of determined hostility against
the Romish Church.

This influence it was enabled to achieve not only by its general
free tone in discussing doctrines and persons commonly reputed
sacred, but also by the educational and thought-provoking effect of

1 Ancien Theatre Fran^ais, Intro. r. xii.

General Causes. 57

its dialogue. For the rude populace this subserved the same purpose
as the scholastic contests of the Schools and Universities did for
mediaeval students. It was a kind of popular dialectic or eristic
much appreciated by the crowd. A stage controversy e.g. between
God and Satan, between Vice and Virtue, between _soul and body
and similar antagonistic entities was certain to evoke both interest
and excitement ; 1 the preponderance of reason and argument on one
side or the other was determined with much shrewdness ; and the
victor and vanquished were awarded their meed of applause or
disdain without reserve or partiality. The extent of controversial
reasoning in the Reformation drama renders indeed many of its best
products slow and monotonous, the evolution of the plot and develop-
ment of the characters being frequently sacrificed to argumentative
victory. Mr. Paley has remarked on the disproportionate amount
of ratiocination which marks the speeches, soliloquies, etc. of the
chief personages in a Greek drama, and accounts for the fact by the
fondness of the Greek for reasoned discourse and dialectical combats.
What was true of the Greek drama, as a national product, is true of
the Reformation drama, as an outcome of new mental fermentation
and spiritual life. Indeed we have this controversial literature in
separate poems, Dialogues, and other productions of the>iind uncon-
nected with the Theatre. 8 The effect of this twofold mode of Truth-
presentation is clear. Questions for discussion were assumed to. be
decided on their merits, after impartial estimate of conflicting sides,
and with no regard to extraneous authority. The paramount im-
portance of reason was thus conceded. Such a principle was dis-
tinctly opposed to authoritative teaching, and to an ab- extra
dictation, whether ecclesiastical or political. At first the dogmas of
the Church were probably regarded as indisputable and beyond the
scope of discussion, but this exemption we know was far from being
conceded at the Renaissance. Nor were the doctrines set forth by
Romanism so inherently pure, nor the characters of those who taught
them so immaculate, as to justify such an exemption. Accordingly
we find a free criticism of most of the dogmas of the Romish Church,
especially when their direct object was to increase the wealth of the
clergy. It would be easy to adduce many examples of this Free-
thought of the Theatre. The ambition and greed of the Pope, and
the immorality of the clergy, were of course favourite objects of stage
invective. But the more speculative doctrines of Christianity were
not always spared. Thus the fall of man, the doctrine of Special

1 Professor Bartoli well remarks that this form of literature is common
throughout the middle ages. See his note, I Primi due Secoli, etc., p. 173.
* Comp. Poeme attributed to Walter Mapes, passim.

58 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Providence and its application to answer to prayer. The ordinary
theory of Divine Justice, the belief in Hell and Purgatory, were
canvassed with unreserve, and sometimes with bitter scorn and
mockery. Instances of this spirit will meet us when we come to
consider Boccaccio's Decameron and Pulci's Morgante Maggiore. At
present I will only quote one instance of free-enquiry opposing
itself to the convictions of theologians. This is how Judas Iscariot
e.g. reproaches God in an old Breton mystery : ' Why has God
created me to be damned on His account? It is the law of the
world that good and evil must dominate, according to their principle
and essence, every created thing. Hence I cannot be permanently
righteous in whatever state I am, if I am made of evil matter. God
is then unrighteous. To us He is neither impartial, nor a true judge.
Far from that, He is perfidious and cruel, in having made me of a
matter destined to cause my fall, and to prevent my reconciliation
with Him.' 1 Whatever may be thought of the conclusions enun-
ciated in this and numberless similar passages found in the Drama
of the Renaissance and the Reformation, we cannot shut our eyes
to the fact that it is reasoning, the outcome of a critical and inde-
pendent spirit brought to bear on theological subjects, an assertion
of the right of Skepticism, in opposition to Dogma.

THE SECULARIZATION OF LITERATURE.

V. Revival of Classical Studies.

But we have yet to consider a greater co-efficient in the Seculariza-
tion of Literature than any of those already touched upon. I mean
the gradual revival of Classical Literature itself. No idea relating
to the middle ages is more common than that which assumes the
utter extinction of Pagandom from about a.d. 500 until its revival at
the Renaissance. The conception is perhaps favoured by the names
given to the great movement that took place in Italy between the thir-
teenth and fifteenth centuries. Such terms as ' revival/ ( Renaissance,'
etc., are understood as if they implied a resurrection from death.

1 Comp. Littre, ttwLes sur Us Barbara et le Moyen Age, p. 857, etc Similar
free-thinking ratiocination occurs also in the Old Cornish miracle plays, e.g.
in the play of * St. Meviasek, Apostle of Cambourne,' we find the following
criticism of the doctrine of the Atonement : —

( If God above was his father, I say, Meviasek,
He could through His grace have saved rich and poor
Without being dead. Of thy assertion shame is !
What need was there for God's son to be slain like a hart ? '

General Causes. 59

This is at least a great exaggeration. The epoch no doubt is a
revival, but rather from debility and helplessness than from absolute
lifelessness. There is really no period of Mediaeval History in which
traces of Pagan culture are not discernible. When, by the establish-
ment of Christianity as the State Religion of the Roman Empire,
Paganism was driven out of the towns, it found an appropriate shelter
in the Pagi or country villages. Here relics of the older Pagan
cultus remained until late in the fourth century ; nay, even in the
fifth, Venus was worshipped in the sacred groves of Campania, 1 while
the festivals of Saturn, Pan, and other mythological divinities con-
tinued to be observed under slightly altered names which disguised
but faintly their real origin. What is thus true of religious tradition
and social usages is also to a less extent true of Latin Literature.
This was a Testament of Antiquity of which Italy was the natural
residuary legatee, but partly on account of the hostility of the Church,
partly by means of political troubles and the disorganization thence
arising, it was a legacy of which for some centuries she was not
permitted to avail herself. No doubt there was throughout the
middle ages a party in the Church which always regarded with furtive
approbation the writings of Pagan Antiquity, but unfortunately it
was by no means the dominant party. The leaders of Latin Chris-
tianity, with unimportant exceptions, were enlisted on the side of in-
tellectual obscurantism. An ancient Council, the Fourth of Carthage,
forbad Bishops to read Pagan authors ; and Tertullian, Augustin and
Jerome found worthy successors in the great leaders of monasticism,
as Cascian and Benedict, and in such Popes as Gregory I. and Paul III.,
the former of whom prohibited the use of all heathen authors, while
the latter stigmatized humanists as heretics. The general spirit of
ecclesiastical tradition was thus opposed to Pagan culture ; and this
prejudice was not greatly modified by the isolated teaching of such
men as Boethius and Cassiodorus, who occupy a position midway be-
tween heathen and Christian erudition. Besides, the direction
which the dogmatic development of the Church had unfortunately
taken was such as to necessitate a vehement opposition to Pagan
culture. The reliance on speculative truths and subtle metaphysical
distinctions was naturally opposed to the enlarged view, the stress
on ratiocination, the robust common sense, which marks the best
products of Greek and Roman Literature. The insistence on ortho-
doxy, as an exclusive prerogative of the Church, vitiated all other
conceivable or possible sources of Truth. The accredited dogma
which was assumed to be supernaturally infallible, and was therefore

1 Comp. Bartoli, Sloria, p. 88.

Co The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

promulgated with a dictatorial authority which forbad not only
criticism but even hesitancy of belief, could not take account of alien
sources of enlightenment, nor even acknowledge their existence. To
this exclusiveness, which is after all the normal product of Sacer-
dotalism, must be added the Asceticism which forbad all relaxation
and enjoyment, and stigmatized even intellectual pleasure as a deadly
sin. No doubt the instincts of the Church, regarded from her own
selfish and ambitious standpoint, were well adapted to subserve her
interests. Enlightenment of whatever kind @ the enemy of priest-
craft and superstition, and the spirit of heathen literature though «,
far from being opposed to the Teaching of Christ, nay having much fn&< e *
in common with that teaching, was certainly antipathetic to the
evolution of mediaeval Romanism.

But though the Church discountenanced and prohibited heathen
learning, though it threw away, as an accursed thing, the thought,
science, poetry, and literature of the great Power to whose position
and prerogatives she had succeeded, she still retained the language
of old Rome. The pupils educated in her schools in the arid gram-
matical studies which formed the staple ingredient of monastic culture
were at least endowed with the power of reading Virgil and Cicero.
Even from the fifth to the eighth century — the dark ages of Italy —
the use of the Latin tongue formed an element of continuity — a tie
with the religion of the present and the literature of the past, which
was not materially affected even by the invasions of the Lombards.
After these barbarians had established themselves throughout Italy,
Latin, though debased and corrupt, continued to be the literary
language. Laws were enacted, studied and enforced in Latin. All
business transactions were conducted in Latin. 1 Sermons were
preached and liturgies read in Latin. Mysteries and miracle plays
were celebrated in Latin. There was thus enough popular currency
in the language to enable a studious layman, as well as the priest or
monk who could command a Latin manuscript, to form some acquaint-
ance with ancient literature.

No doubt Italy was, at the time I am speaking of, far behind the
level of France, Spain and England in the cultivation of classical
and secular learning. She jsjifffired the penalty of having in her
midst the ancient capital of the Western Empire. To cross the
Alps, ravage the plains of North Italy, and sack Rome had become
the favourite traditional policy of every powerful horde of Northern
barbarians. Italy had no schools so celebrated as that of York, 2 nor so

1 M ura tori. Aut. Ital. Di*8. y 48. Comp. Bartoli, i" Primi due Secoli, etc., p. 26.
* Cf. Alcuin's well-known poetical List of Classical Authors in the Library

General Causes. 61

free and enlightened as those of Ireland, 1 nor so numerous and well
conducted as the mona stic schools of Gaul. The smaller schools
attached to parochial churches, of which we read in the sixth century, 3
were no doubt put an end to by the Lombard Invasions. They shared
the fare of the libraries burnt, churches violated and despoiled, and
convents sacked which marked the track of the'barbarians. Passing
over the few and unimportant scintillations of Intellectual Light with
which Tiraboschi and others endeavour to relieve this sombre period
of Italian History, we may say that it is impossible to assign any
movement of classical learning which affects, though only indirectly,
the Italian Renaissance before the educational Reform of Charlemagne
in the ninth century. Even this episode — the most brilliant in the
history of mediaeval Literature — had only a temporary existence
in France, and was much more short-lived in Italy. The leading
spirits of the movement also, Alcuin and Babanus Maurus, only
professed to teach those sciences of antiquity which most directly
subserved the interests of the Church. The former indeed forbad
a disciple to teach his pupils the reading of heathen authors. 3
The latter, though more liberal, adhered too closely to traditional
methods and conceptions to permit his influence to be described
as really enlightening. Besides which, the education imparted in
even the best of the monastic schools was of a wretchedly narrow-
minded description. Not even its warmest advocates would con-
tend that it possessed any truly cultural significance. Intended
primarily to mould the monastic intellect, its chief aim was to impart
that semblance of instruction which while it satisfied was unable to
nourish or promote the mental growth of its recipients. Instead of
bidding the eager mind to march forward it assuaged its restlessness
by adroitly contrived schemes of ' marking time.' There was, in other
words, motion, but no progression. But whatever results this effort of
Charlemagne had in Italy they were of a temporary character. The
inroads of foreigners, after the final collapse of Charlemagne's power,

of York, and see Mullinger's Schools of Charlemagne, p. 60, and Heeren, Gesch.
d. class. LiUeratur im MiUelalter, Werke, iv. p. 182.

1 Com p. Haureau, Singularity Historiques et Litteraires, Essay L ( Ecoles
d'Irlande, pp. 1-86.

* Tiraboschi, Storia, vol. iii. p. 47.

3 * De peur,' says Guigueng * que cette lecture ne leur corrompit le coeur,'
Hist. Litt. (Vltalie, i. p. 94. The best recent account of Alcuin and the curious
admixture of monkish and literary elements in his character is that given by
Mr. Mullinger, Schools of Charlemagne, chap. ii. To the credit side of Alcuin's
intellectual formation must be placed the nationalism which refused to see
in the Witch of Endor's apparition of Samuel anything more than the sub*
jective illusion of Saul.

62 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

still desolated Italy. In the North, the Hungarians, in the South the
Saracens and Normans carried fire and sword through her towns and
villages, though the latter also conveyed a germ of future Free-
thought by the introduction of Arab culture and Provencal Poetry.
Previous to the year 1000 there was, besides, another potent cause
which retarded, or rather quenched for the time, the advance of clas-
sical culture : I mean the general perturbation as to the end of all
things being at hand. The general terror worked by this anticipa-
tion operated now, as on former occasions in the history of Christianity,
viz. in stifling all human interests, in paralysing all mental effort,
and subjecting man as a bondslave to the cupidity and tyranny of
the Church. Thus in the Literary history of Italy there occurs
another dark patch, in the early part of the tenth century, hardly
less intense than the dark ages of the fifth to the eighth century.
But even at this period, and notwithstanding the depressed state of
classical learning, we possess a few records to show that it was not
extinct. Here and there amid the political troubles, the degrading
superstition, the profound ignorance, might be found a solitary
student who basked, as we before a coal fire, in the sunlight of other
days. Here and there, were found monastic libraries which con-
tained, besides ecclesiastical treatises, some of the best authors of
Heathen antiquity; 1 though the latter are as yet in a considerable
minority.

In the eleventh century classical culture begins to be merged with
the other literary confluents which combine to make up the general
stream of the Renaissance. The fermentation now at work, Political,
Religious, Social, Literary, is of too varied and complex a character
to admit accurate definition. The Italian communes were beginning
to combine and to assert their new-born political energy. Commerce
and the Crusades were exerting the stimulation we have already
ascribed to them. Schools and Universities come into existence.
Arab Free-thought and Culture are being disseminated; and with
other secular influences, stimulating and being stimulated by them,
there is a decided quickening of men's interests in the products of
Heathen Antiquity, an evident wish to understand and appropriate
the thoughts of Ancient Philosophical systems. Foremost among
classical authors who now arrested attention as thinkers, was Aris-
totle, some of whose works, Latin translations from the Arabic, be-
gan to be known and discussed both in France and Italy. At the

1 See e.g. the Library Catalogue of the Monastery of Bobbio given by
Muratori, Ant. Ital. y iii. pp. 818-825. Comp. Heeren. Op. cit. p. 198 note, and see
Tiraboschi, Storia, iii. pp. 276-282.

General Causes. 63

commencement of the century a certain Vilgard, 1 master of the school
at Ravenna, had the temerity to assert that all the dicta of the
ancient Poets were true, and were to be accepted as articles of Faith,
in preference to Christian mysteries. While at its termination we
meet in Florence a sect of Epicureans who a few years later attained
such power as to cause political troubles. Moreover, the Ghibellines,
the leaders of the Italian communes, and in general the determined
asserters of secular as opposed to Papal power, were frequently repre-
sented as materialists and irreligious; and though the imputation was
hardly true of the majority, there was undoubtedly a large minority
of whom it held good. Into the general excitation, of which these
are a few examples, Italy entered with alacrity. In times past it
had always been celebrated for Free-thought, when Free-thought was
possible. Among the adherents to the Arian and Pelagian heresies
in the fourth century not a few were Italians. 2 It would seem that
proximity to Rome, in mediaeval as in modern times, produced a dis-
illusionising effect. The Italians, says Professor Bartoli, 3 were
averse to Theological studies. All the great names of Italian Theo-
logy, Lanfranc, Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventura, Thomas
Aquinas, made their mark and obtained their celebrity in foreign
countries and universities. The chief studies in vogue in the Italian
Universities of the twelfth and thirteenth century are Roman Law
and Philosophy.

Having thus brought down the stream of classical learning to the
commencement of the Renaissance, when Dante and Petrarca meet us,
I will next glance at another and final concurrent cause of Italian
Free-thought : —

THE SECULARIZATION OF LITERATURE.

VI. Arab Culture and Philosophy.

Into the earliest relations of Islamism and Christianity we need
not enter. I have already noticed their mutual position as distinct
dogmatic systems, and the; antagonism this was calculated to pro-

1 Kenan, Averroes, p. 284.

* Tiraboschi, Storia, vol. iii. p. 48.

• Cf. Bartoli, J Primi due Stcoli, p. 201, who quotes Giesebrecht, ' Sacree
discipline per omnia haec tempora, indoli atque ingenio nationis parum con-
venerunt, exiguoque fructu sunt cultqe ' (pp. 24-25) ; in another passage where
the same author compares Italians with Germans he says, ' Hi arm is, forensi-
bns pergaudent negotiis; illi (Germans) summa cum animi delectatione in
rebus sacris, in martyrum meritis, in fide Christiana propagata commorantur '
(pag. 28). \

64 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

voke. But whatever may be said of the bigotry displayed by
Islamism in its earlier history, and occasionally afterwards, it is cer-
tain that Mahomet himself with all his prophetic enthusiasm, was a
tolerant man. 1 Undoubtedly he was so to Judaism and Christianity.
There were indeed too many elements common to the three Semitic
religions to permit a logical standpoint of antagonism for the youngest
against the two elder. The most honoured names both in Judaism
and Christianity were sacred to the Arabian prophet. There were
also similarities of religious thought, opinion and sympathies — the
common substratum of Semiticism — which he not only recognized,
but of which he shrewdly availed himself in controversy with Jews
and Christians. No doubt there are passages in the Koran which
manifest an intense hatred of unbelievers ; but by these are intended
idolaters and Polytheists, not varying phases of Monotheism. Hence,
setting aside exceptions of cruelty and fanaticism, unhappily common
to all dogmatic faiths, we have in the leaders of Mahometanism, as in
the Prophet himself, examples of men who are eminent for enlighten-
ment, liberality and toleration ; and the history of Islamism, taken as
a whole, must be regarded as a powerful propaganda of Free-thought
and liberal culture, which is all the more striking when contrasted
with the barbarism by which it was surrounded.

The reason of the superiority of the Arab over other Semitic races
as a pioneer of enlightenment, science, and toleration seems to be
their greater intellectual mobility, and their keener receptivity. These
qualities enabled the Mahometan leaders to value and appropriate
whatever learning, thought or science they found existing among the
races whom they conquered, 2 while the same attributes enabled them
to modify whatever articles in their own belief they discovered to be
repugnant to the intellectual advance, the mental freedom, or real
welfare of humanity. 3 Possessed of these qualities we need not feel
surprised at the consequences of Arab thought coming into contact
with the remnants of Greek criticism that survived in Syria, and at
Alexandria, in the eighth century. Ancient philosophy, discarded by
Christianity, and despised by the barbarism spreading over the South
of Europe, seemed to find at once a new home at Damascus and Alex-
andria, whence it was again to blaze forth and enlighten the countries
of its birth. The Khalifs of Damascus first set the example of literary
activity. They employed teachers, Christians many of them, to dis-
close some of the wondrous treasures of Greek wisdom. Aided by
munificent and enlightened patronage these men began translating

1 Comp. Sedillot, Hist. Gen. des Arabes^ i. p. 84.
3 Comp. Humboldt, Cosmos (Bonn), vol. ii. p. 583.
* Comp. Sedillot, op. cit. pp. 196, 408 and passim.

General Causes. 65

the works of the chief Greek thinkers into Arabic. Commencing with
the mathematicians and astronomers, they next proceeded to the
philosophers. These translations were sometimes made from Syriac
as well as from Greek ; and were not very correct representations of
the originals ; but they served the purpose of quickening the tastes
of the Arabs for mathematics and literary culture, and inciting them
to a closer acquaintance with an erudition in many respects differing
greatly from their own Semitic ideas. Precisely the same movement
was taking place at Alexandria, where we have the commencement
of the literary impulse which subsequently culminated at Bagdad. 1
Thus, while the loaders of Christianity were occupied in trivial and
endless disputes, while they were painfully elaborating jew heresies
out of subtle and impalpable distinctions, while they anathematized
and devoted to endless torture all non- Christians, especially the
followers of the great Arabian heresiarch, the Khalifa of Damascus
took Christians into their councils, employed them in their schools
and sat at their feet as teachers of Science and Philosophy. Even
more remarkable, if possible, is the enlightenment, toleration, the
cultivation of arts, science and literature which distinguished the
Khalifate of Bagdad under the Abassides. ' The passion/ says M.
Sedillot, 2 speaking of this Khalifate, ' with which the Arabs surren-
dered themselves to literary studies excels even that manifested by
Europe at the Renaissance.' The best works in the Greek language,
brought from Constantinople, were immediately translated. A school
of interpreters was opened at Bagdad under the direction of a
Nestorian doctor. A revenue of 15,000 dinars was devoted to a
college in which 6,000 pupils of every rank received gratuitous
instruction. Libraries were founded open to all the world ; and these
were increased from time to time by princes, some of whom even took
part in the public lectures of the professors. Mathematical learning
attained a height never before known. Astronomy was enriched by
important discoveries. Observatories were built and furnished with
instruments the greatness of which appals the imagination. There
were hospitals for the instruction of doctors, laboratories for chemical
experiments, etc. And all this brilliancy of literary and scientific
attainment, in the far East, is contemporary with Charlemagne, in
other words when the whole of Christian Europe was submerged in
a barbarism very insufficiently tempered by the Educational Reform
which he initiated. No wonder that historians find the comparison of
Charlemagne and Haroun al Raschid well adapted to illustrate the
difference between the civilizations of the East and the West in the

1 Sedillot, op. cit., i. p. 184.
* Op. cit., i. p. 239.
VOL. I. F

66 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

ninth century. 1 The material products of the Arabs of Bagdad were
uot less wonderful than their intellectual activity; and with these
Italy early made acquaintance, as we have seen, by her commercial
intercourse with Constantinople and the seaports of the Levant.
Thus into the ports of Pisa and Genoa together with the bales of
Eastern carpets, the spices and perfumes, the aromatic woods and
other precious products of Bagdad, perhaps some mechanical rarity
like the clock which Haroun al Raschid sent to Charlemagne, came
the reports of die wondrous erudition, the novel sciences, the tolera-
tion, the general enlightenment which distinguished this marvellous
creation of the followers of the Arabian prophet.

But it is to the Arab civilization in Spain that we must look for
those influences of free-culture that directly affected the Italian
Renaissance. For the space of three centuries (from the beginning
of the eighth to that of the eleventh) the Peninsula was governed by
tolerant and enlightened princes, who protected and advanced with
all their power every branch of human knowledge. 8 Here also we
meet with the same erudite industry, the same passionate zeal for
letters and science, the same freedom and tolerance as characterized
the Abassides of Bagdad. In the Spanish schools were taught
Astronomy, Geography, Dialectic, Medicine,' Grammar, as well as
the elements of Physics, Chemistry, and Natural History. Libraries
were established in every large town, which were well filled with
copies of Ancient Greek Authors and Alexandrian Philosophers.
Mathematical Sciences — Algebra and Geometry — were cultivated with
success. These branches of learning found their way by means of
itinerant scholars into neighbouring countries. One of the earliest
and most remarkable names which thus serves as a bond of connec-
tion between Arab culture and Latin Christianity is the famous Ger-
bert who afterwards became Pope under the name of Silvester II. 8
He had studied under Arab teachers at Barcelona and Cordova.
After his elevation to the Papacy he was accused of practising the
black art. The comparative measure of enlightenment between Spain
and Rome may be estimated by the circumstance that what in Spain

1 E.g. Heeren, in his Fclgen der KreuzzttgefUr Europa, Werke, ii. p. 71.

* Comp. Sedillot, op. cit., i. pp. 817-348, and Sismondi, De la Litt. du Midi, etc.,
chap. iii.

3 On this remarkable man — probably the most learned that ever sat on the
Papal throne — See Histoire Litteraire, voL vi., Haureau's Article in the Nouvelle
Biog. General*, and compare Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 418. On
the legends with which Roman fanaticism has invested his character see
Bartoli, Storia, etc., p. 112, etc. Gregorovius in hks Roman History (iii. 617) justly
remarks that Gerbert * shone in Borne like a solitary torch in a dark night. 1

General Causes. 67

was wisdom, learning and science, became in the capital of Christen-
dom magic, necromancy, and dealings with the Evil one. 1

To these more solid intellectual pursuits of the Spanish Arabs must
be added their devotion to music, dancing, the composing and singing
of songs, in a word, the gayer and more refining elements in their
civilization, which the Provencal and chivalresque poetry afterwards
disseminated throughout Italy and Europe. The arts imwrhich they
manifest the least excellence are those of Sculpture and Painting,
which were forbidden by the Koran; though, even in these their
ingenious evasions of their founder's prohibitions are sufficient to
indicate the ability they would have attained if their genius had
been allowed free scope. Their power in this direction is further
attested by their taste and skill in architecture and decorative paint-
ing, the remains of which still excite the wonder and despair of %
Europe. The general result of this culture and science on the intel-
lectual development of modern Europe is a subject we need not enter
upon. It has been so often and so ably treated that little is left to be
added. 2 Even the barest summary of inventions, discoveries, and
improvements effected by the Arabs in Poetry, Music, Astronomy,
Chemistry, Architecture, Medicine, the Mechanical Arts, Natural
History, Botany, etc., would occupy far too much time for our
present purpose. They form a striking and lasting tribute to the %
beneficent effects of free-culture and unimpeded enquiry. They also
justify the employment of Rationalism, as against a slavish Bibliola-
try. The literal observance of the text of the Koran would have
made the civilization of Damascus, Bagdad and Cordova sheer im-
possibilities. Nor were these learned pursuits and refined amuse-
ments of the Spanish Arabs restricted to any one class. ' The taste
for intellectual pleasures/ says Sedillot, 8 ' penetrated every stage of
Society.' Nor again were Mussulmans regarded with more favour
than Christians. The most complete toleration existed for every
mode of religious belief ; while the highest offices in the State were
open to men of every class without the least distinction. The
Christians of Spain early appreciated the liberty which their own
co-religionaries, when they had power to refuse it, thought it a

1 The mediaeval legend of Theophilus — one of the many precursors of the
Faust-Legend — is derived from this enlightened pope. And comp. Scheible's
Kloster, ii. pp. 155-177. Gerbert like his brother Black Artist is said to have
been accompanied by a familiar in the form of a large black dog. Comp.
chapter on Agrippa, Evenings with the Skeptics, vol. II., p. 471.

* Comp. e.g. Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. ; Hum-
boldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. (Bonn's Trans.) ; Draper's Intellectual Development, etc.

» Op. cit. i. 842.

68 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

heinous crime to extend to the accursed followers of Mahomet.
They soon learnt the Arabic language ; and the employment of this
tongue became so general that a Christian Bishop, the celebrated
John of Seville, translated the Bible into it for their use. 1 So also
the Canons of the Church in Spain were written in Arabic. 2 In the
ninth and tenth centuries, both the Spanish — i.e. the Romance stage
of it— and the Arabic seem to have been spoken indifferently by the
people ; so that Arab learning was imparted without even the neces-
sity of knowing the Arabic language. Hardly less than the intel-
lectual was the commercial activity of the Moors and Arabs. Their
products and manufactures were known and valued throughout
Europe, in the Levant, and on the coasts of Africa. Toledo was
famous for its blades, Granada for its silks, Cordova for its harness
and saddles, Cuenca for its woollens — the blue and green cloths which
were known throughout Europe — and Valentia for its sugar and spices,
not to mention the more general products of the country. Most of
this commerce was in the hands of Jews and Moors who had their
agents at the seaports of Italy, Africa, and the Levant, while traders
on foot found their way across the Pyrenees to the South of France
and the Plains of Lombardy. To this commercial intercourse
must be attributed, I think, the extent to which Arab ideas and
civilization became known in Italy. Notwithstanding sacerdotal
exclusiveness, Bulls of Popes, and other embargoes of a similar kind,
the Italian merchant could hardly help contrasting the superiority of
the wares which came from Spain with those which his own country
was capable of producing. He might have extended the contrast to
the well-known probity of the Moorish compared, with the laxity of
the Christian trader, who could always obtain absolution for com-
mercial turpitude by means of the very gains he had thereby
acquired ; or he might have compared, with like feelings of envy, the
internal peace and prosperity enjoyed by the subjects of the Khalifs
of Cordova with the perpetual strife occasioned by the ambition of
the Popes of Rome. But besides the Free-thought thus furtively im-
ported with commercial bales, bottles and parcels into Italy, there was
a more direct traffic of the same forbidden commodity, both by the
songs of the Provencals, which I have already considered, and by the
return of youths who had resorted to the Spanish universities to com-
plete their education. For, in common with France and England,
Italy also sent some of her sons to Seville, Cordova, Barcelona in
order to acquire the Philosophy and Science which were then obtain-

1 Comp. Dr. Leclerc, Hist de la Midicine Arabe, vol. ii. p. 366, and for a List
of John of Seville's Translations, etc., see the same work, p. 870, etc.
* Sismondi, Litter, du Midi, chap. iii.

General Causes. 69

able in no other University towns in Europe. 1 These on their return
reported the marvellous civilization, the mental freedom, the noble
tolerance, which not even the rancour stirred in men's minds by the
first Crusades could affect 2 — the general order, peace and prosperity
of the ( felon Paynims. 1 In all probability there was an importation
of some of the numerous translations which the professors at Cordova
and elsewhere made from Greek Philosophers and Mathematicians, as
well as their own original contributions to these and cognate subjects.
Thus was Italy preparing herself, by a foretaste of Mahometan Free-
thought and tolerance, for that manifestation of it which she was
about to offer to Europe in her own Renaissance. The intercourse I
am now considering, between the Islamism of Spain and the
Romanism of Italy, has moreover another and a more portentous
aspect. It seems clear that it resulted occasionally in the conversion
of Christians to Mahometans. Such a process, suggested by the com-
parative civilizations of the two countries, and facilitated by the
lax interpretation of the Koran which is a distinguishing feature of
all the higher stages of Mussulman culture, would have been both
natural and pardonable. Indeed the apostasy which preferred the
vicegerent of Mahomet to that of Christ might well be regarded as
no true apostasy at all, but a transference of allegiance from a
corrupt and perverted Christianity to a faith and conduct nearer its
own primal spirit. The legends and mystery-plays of the middle
ages are not unfrequently based upon the crime of apostasy — gene-
rally to Mahometanism. These mostly take the form of a man selling
himself to the devil by denying Jesus Christ, and being afterwards
rescued from the consequences of his compact by the intercession of
the Virgin. 1 Such legends did not want historical instances on which
to establish themselves. Whenever a mediaeval thinker seemed in-
doctrinated with a love of knowledge and mental freedom, the rare
phenomenon was immediately ascribed to diabolical agency, and a
secret conversion to Islamism. Legends of this kind surround the
memory of the great Gerbert (Pope Silvester II.) ; and no accusation
was more common in the mouth of his clerical calumniators than that
Frederick Barbarossa had abjured Christianity and embraced the

1 Sismondi, loc. cit.

1 * Alors que les Croises entraient dans Jerusalem, lea portes de Toledo rlcem-
ment conquise, s'ouvraient a Gerard de Cremone et a toute une legion de
savants qui s'en allaient demander a Petranger les moyens d 'etude qu'ils ne
pouvaient trouver dans leur patrie.' — Dr. Leclerc, Hist, de la Med. Arabe, i. p. 581.

8 This is the subject of the mediaeval legend or miracle play of Theophilus,
which goes back so far as the sixth century. Comp. its treatment by Buteboeuf ,
Le Miracle de Theophile, (Euv. Comp., Ed. Jubinal, ii. p. 79.

jo The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

faith of Mahomet. These accusations of impiety received a new im-
pulse in Italy from the propagation of that phase of Arab Philosophy
which more than any other contributed to the growth of Italian Free-
thought — I mean Averroism.

Without enteriug at all minutely into the heterogeneous mass of
doctrine with which the name of Averroes is identified, we may say,
briefly, that its chief phases are derived from the Idealism of the
Alexandrian School, grafted upon a half real, half supposititious
foundation of Aristotle. This at once supplies us with the reasons
of its popularity among the thinkers of the Renaissance, as well as of
its gradual decadence in proportion to the decline of scholasticism.
Its doctrines were associated with the name which of all ancient
thinkers was held most in reverence. The title by which Averroes is
known to Dante and Petrarca is 'the great Commentator upon/ it is
always implied, ' the greater writer — The Philosopher par excellence.'
During the eleventh and twelth centuries the reputation of Aristotle
had reached its climax before the attention of the Church was drawn
to the dangerous consequences of his teaching. The greater part of
this period coincides with the literary activity and early fame of
Averroes. In the rapid extension of Averroism which followed, this
original connection with Aristotle must be taken into account ; for it
was just this that first established him as a powerful influence among
the thinkers of the Renaissance, though the commentator and disciple
ultimately superseded the Master. But if Averroes thus owed much
of his fame and consideration to the Stagirite, his own thought ten-
dencies were also congenial to the Italian intellect. These were
metaphysical and mystical to the very verge of Idealistic negation. 1
. Matter, with him as with most other Arab thinkers, is eternal. Indeed
in its metaphysical definition, as materia prima, it is copceived as
identical with Deity. Creation is not an event, but an eternal process.
God is the collective designation of all intellectual and spiritual forces.
The individual intellect, in its coming forth into activity or, as an
Hegelian would phrase it, in its gradual self recognition and assertion,
is part of the universal mind. And this, in the case of the wise and good,
is their ultimate destiny. 8 In a word, the outcome of Averroism is a
** • peculiarly subtle and intricate Pantheism. * ' No doubt he claimed to
~t-2r'gy b® an orthodox Mussulman, but it is quite evident that his scheme of

.^-. x**^* * ^ or an a ^ e summary of Averroism, Comp. Munk's Melanges de Phil. Juiv*
jp^* % < % / / et Arabe, p. 442 eta , and for a more extended exposition see Kenan's Averroes,
f^Py PP- 88-162.
J?' * This final self-annihilation of the Individual intellect being accomplished

by Knowledge assimilated the teaching of Averroes to Buddhism and the

doctrine of Nirvana. Cf. Munk, Melanges, pp. 448, 450.

General Causes. 71

Philosophy conflicts with the main Dogmas both of Islam and of
Christianity. Like Erigena, he believed that Philosophy and Religion
were one ; and he proposed to discover this standpoint in the Koran. 1
He also pleaded the stress of the same authority on Truth as a reason
for Free-thought and independent research. He further contrived by
an ingenious elaboration of metaphysics to attain to the orthodox
dogmas of Islamism, just as Hegel managed to extract certain affini-
ties to the creed of Ecclesiastical Christianity from his Transcen-
dentalism. But in the case of Averroes the attempt was unsuccessful.
He was unable to deceive his co-religionaries. Not only was he re-
garded as a suspected thinker, but as having brought to a climax the
Free-thought of Islamism. He was in truth the last of a brilliant
succession of thinkers to whom the Khalifate of Cordova had given
birth. After Averroes- a reaction against Mahometan Free-thought
set in, just as the Renaissance was followed by a similar antagonistic
movement against the Free-thought of Christianity. Still more
polemical was the attitude of Averroes to Christianity. His philo-
sophy found no place for the doctrines of Creation,. Providence,
Miracles, Revelation, hardly even for Deity, in its ordinarily received
acceptation among Christians. Hence, to the Italians of the latter
part of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century, who
probably for other reasons had become suspicious or impatient of the
Dogmas of the Church, Averroism furnished a philosophical stand-
point of indifference, or it might be even hostility, to the older creed.
It also contributed by its stress on ratiocination, by the wide reach
of its method, by its larger conception of the laws of the universe
to stimulate intellectual independence and self-possession. Hence
Averroism, apart from its characteristic conclusions, undoubtedly aided
the cause of Free-thought.' We shall find indeed that Pantheism
in alliance with Mysticism is a not unfrequent accompaniment of
Skepticism, though rather as a goal than a starting point. It need
not therefore surprise us to discover so much of the Italian Skepticism
of the thirteenth century attributed to Averroistic influences, nor
that Leo X. with all his liberal culture, his profound respect for
Aristotle, his secret sympathy with Free-thought, should have thought
it necessary to issue a Bull against the Averroists. But notwith-
standing the suspicion of orthodox Mussulmans and the repressive
measures of the Church, 8 Averroism continued to increase in Italy.
Tiraboschi remarks on the enormous following the great Arab free-
thinker contrived to obtain ; and attributes to his works much of the

1 Com p. Munk, Melanges de Phil. Juive et Arabe, p. 453.
* Comp. Ren an, Averroes^ pp. 225-255.

72 Tlie Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

impiety and irreligion which marks the Renaissance. 1 In the
fifteenth century the ' Great Commentary ' had succeeded in thrust-
ing the paternal Text — Aristotle himself — from the seat of honour
it had so long occupied, 2 and the chief University of Italy, that of
Padua, became, for some century and a half, a school of Averroism.

In concluding this sketch of the varied influences we have classified
under the general heading 4 Secularization of Literature/ and which
aided so powerfully to promote the Italian Renaissance, we must I
think award the highest place to Arab culture ; especially with all its
concomitants of Provencal Poetry, Averroistic Philosophy, and
general Free-thought. No doubt in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies these influences gave way, in point of importance, to those of
Classical Literature and Philosophy. The very subtlety of Averroes,
though congenial to the Italian mind, tended, by its excessive tenuity
and metaphysical complexity, to induce an opposition in favour of the
breadth, directness and simplicity of classicalism. 3 Its association
with Aristotle, though at first an advantage, was a decided demerit
when Aristotle himself, in common with the Scholasticism of which
he had become an integral part, was threatened with subversion.
But the essential spirit of Averroism — its Pantheistic Idealism —
though under different forms and employing other terminologies, con-
tinued to live in succeeding Italian Philosophy. It distinguishes
Zarabella, Cremonini, Cesalpinus, Cardan, and other well-known
free-thinkers ; and we shall have to note its presence in Pomponazzi,
Giordano Bruno, and Vanini.

REACTION OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA.

Besides the agencies already enumerated which operated directly
in promoting the Renaissance, there remains to be considered a whole
class of indirect influences that contributed to the same event. I mean
the various Reactionary effects of the dogmatic system of the Church.

Not only is the primary axiom of our subject true, viz.: — that ex-
cessive repression of thought induces a rebound, but it is equally cer-
tain that, cceteris paribus, the violence of the rebound will be in the
ratio of that of the repression. Applied to thought, and systems of
dogma, this law is the same as that formulated by Sextos Empeirikos,

1 iStoria, etc., vol. v. pp. 277, 280.

* Renan, Op. cit., p. 816.

3 All the influences which combined to overthrow Averroism are derived
from a more extended knowledge of Greek Antiquity. M. Renan discrimin-
ates three varieties of them. 1. Peripatetic Hellenism. 2. Platonism. 3.
Humanism. See his Averroes, pp. 888-400.

C v

General Causes. 73

viz. That the Skepticism which assails Dogma will be proportionate,
in extent and intensity, to the Dogma assailed. Considered from this
point of view, we might say that Romanism was in a great measure
the active but unwilling, cause of the Italian Renaissance, as it was of
the German Reformation.

Perhaps one of the most noteworthy features of the doctrinal
development of mediaeval Christianity was the stupendous growth ^
of its metaphysical doctrines, and the excessive elaboration of
Dialectics on which this huge superstructure was based. The simple
creed which Jesus Christ taught had become an abstruse and elabor-
ate philosophy, which propounded the most transcendental of ab-
stractions as though they were an important element of everyday
existence, which attempted to divide an'd discriminate between im-
palpable entities when any but a nominal division was inconceivable ;
and which in all cases invested the final result of their metaphysical
subtlety with the sacred character and imposing name of 'orthodoxy.'
The controversies to which this method gave birth, and which filled
the mediaeval Church with their clamour, are of the kind we might
have anticipated from their origin. They are ludicrously trivial and
puerile, either in their object or their treatment — not uncommonly in
both. They attempt to dogmatize on matters not only beyond the
ken, but far beyond the practical interests of humanity. They
decide on the nature and attributes of Deity, of Angels and Spirits,
and of a future life, with the same undoubting persuasion of their
infallibility as the Encyclopaedists displayed in secular knowledge.
The result of this metaphysical development, at every stage of its
growth, was a clear gain for the Church, and an equally undoubted
loss of freedom to humanity. The more difficult, self-contradictory,
irrational any given dogma, the greater authority its unreserved
acceptation assigned to the Church, and the greater the contempt of
human reason that acceptation involved. And, regarding the Church
as a moral teacher, the more any dogma conflicted with human
instincts and ethical convictions, the greater the authority its re-
ception conceded to the Church ; and the more abject and submissive^
became the attitude of the human conscience to its behests. Tertul-
lian's maxim, ' Credo quia impossible,' represents the ordinary stand-
point of mediaeval Christianity, both as respects speculation and
ethical teaching, and sufficiently, attests its slavish character.

Against this incubus of metaphysical dictation — against the trans-
cendentalism of the schools — the men of the Renaissance protested.
They did not, for the most part, reason against the super-subtle dogmas
to which their consent was demanded. Their forte did not lie in
dialectics; and their natural aptitudes were toor untheological to let

74 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

them care for disquisitions on ecclesiastical matters. But they dis-
cerned with an intuitive glance those aspects of an over-strained belief
which could have nothing in common with ordinary human interests,
or which lent themselves most readily to burlesque and caricature.
They appreciated e.g. at its full worth the claims of an infallibility
in divine things which was so often united to imbecility in secular
matters. Difficult dogmas they sometimes treated ironically, as if
transparently obvious; or else, admitting their incomprehensibility,
they derided them by ludicrous attempts at explanation ; or finally
they burlesqued them in an openly shameless and profane manner.
The Morgante Maggiore of Pulci is full of these free treatments of
theological dogma ; to some of which I shall have presently to call
your attention. However naturally our feelings of repugnance might
be excited by such treatment, we must remember that we have never
been bound so helplessly to the car of theological metaphysics as
these men had been, and never therefore experienced the uncontrol-
able revulsion of feeling which attended their self-wrought deliver-
ance. The real craving which was signified in this unruly manner,
which underlay this bitter contempt for scholastic metaphysics, was
a desire for simplicity, for rationality, for a conception of the world
and of Nature as real present actualities, for beliefs and teachings
more in accordance with human wants. The need was part of that
general yearning for a return to Nature, to life, to humanity, to
common sense and common feeling, which permeates and justifies
the Renaissance. Not that the humanism of that movement, nor the
Protestant Reformation succeeded in extirpating abstruse meta-
physics from the region of genuine Christianity — simple devotion to
God and duty to man — but they commenced that appreciation of sim-
plicity in religions creeds which has grown in direct proportion with
the progress of culture, knowledge, and religious perspicacity down
to the present day.

REACTION AGAINST ASCETICISM.

Besides this reaction against scholasticism, and abstruse meta-
physics there was another and stronger recoil that opposed itself to
mediaeval asceticism. The extent to which gloomy and sombre views
of human existence, and everything thereunto appertaining, prevailed
in the middle ages I need not dwell upon, as it is one of their chief
characteristics. Not only was Theology affected by this Pessimistic
fanaticism, but it pervaded Social life, Literature, the Fine Arts, and
even Architecture. God was regarded as a cruel Tyrant whose
wrath was to be deprecated, and favour secured, by self-inflicted
torments of every description. Man was the veriest slave of the

General Causes. 75

Divine caprice, whose whole duty consisted in attaining by the
only mode of voluntary macerations, penances and tortures, everlast-
ing beatitude in the world to come. For this world, it was but a
gigantic prison house, or an enormous cloistral vestibule of Eternity.
As for men and women, they were either to be wholly avoided as
sources of temptation and pleasure, or else were regarded as fellow
ascetics and travellers on the selfsame thorny and bitter road to
heaven. Setting aside the facts that the passion for asceticism has
its roots in the religious instincts, especially when these are evolved
naturally or by education of a certain narrow type — and that it
possesses affinities in the (often misunderstood) teachings of Christ
— there were certain operative causes at work which serve to
explain its enormous influence in the middle ages. (1) The Church-
itself had subordinated morality and human duty to Theology. In-
stead of placing man, as an object of service, on the level of God
Himself, as Christ did, it established an impassable gulf between
the religious and the ethical duty. The sole attention of the Chris-
tian being directed to the task of saving his soul, was necessarily
concentrated on himself. Hence all his efforts acquired a peculiarly
insidious flavour of selfishness. Asceticism was only a form of mis-
chievous self-indulgence. Prayers and penances were bribes to secure
the favour of God. Macerations and tortures were preparatives, and
provocatives, calculated to effect an entrance into, and to enhance
the pleasures of heaven. Thus the Church, by her false teaching,
placed a direct premium on the most fatal and benumbing kind of
selfishness — religious selfishness. Even allowing a certain modicum
of conscientiousness to pertain to her ascetic doctrine, it is certain that
in her excessive advocacy of it she herself was impelled by selfish
motives. With her characteristic astuteness she perceived that the
submissive spirit engendered by perpetual and unlimited self-sacrifice,
the intellectual stolidity induced by a monotonous round of religious
duties — the reputation of superior sanctity that attached to asceticism,
were all materials she could employ for her own ascendancy and
ambition. Accordingly she favoured by all means in her power that
Monastic Conception of Christianity and existence against which the
Renaissance and the Reformation, and since their time the reason
and common-sense of civilized humanity, have so vehemently protested.
But though the Romish Church was thus guilty of this, as of every
other, perversion of Primitive Christianity, there were other circum-
stances in mediaeval Italy which seemed to set a seal on her teaching.
First was the repeated and profound conviction of the approaching
end of the world. As a preparation for this event what was so
effective as a cloistral life of Prayer and Penance. Hence Feudal

7 6 The Skeptics of tJie Italian Renaissance.

barons and high-born ladies gave not only themselves but, what was
of more importance, their wealth, into the hands of the Church ; and
both the spiritual and territorial power of Rome were immeasurably
increased by every Eschatological Panic that invaded Christendom.
It is not wonderful that the Church in the persons of superstitious
Pontiffs like Gregory I. undertook to foretell these profitable contin-
gencies. In a superstitious and unenquiring age her power was too
firmly based to be affected by the non-fulfilment of her vaticinations,
and if she failed to secure the immediate enjoyment of Heaven for her
votaries, the contretemps was largely compensated by a greater
acquisition of Earth for herself. Moreover in Italy, both the general
asceticism of mediaeval Christianity, and the fear of an impending
Final judgment, had their gloom intensified by political troubles.
When towns, convents, private houses, churches were ravaged by
one horde of Barbarians after another, — when uncertainty and insecuri ty
infested the ordinary concerns of life, — when ignorance and supersti-
tion were elevated to cardinal virtues, and man was delivered over a
helpless prey to Sacerdotalism, the conditions of existence were hardly
of such a character as to warrant a cheerful optimistic theory of Life.
The result of this ascetic culture, or rather mis-culture, was the dif-
fusion of a narrow spirit of Pietism, obscurantism, and bigotry which
opposed itself to all knowledge and enlightenment. Pagan learn-
ing was forbidden as a sin. Mental cultivation was tabooed as a
frivolous and utterly needless attainment. Relaxation, whether
mental or physical, was stigmatised as unholy. The enjoyment of
Nature — the refining influences of the Arts, as Music, Poetry, and
Painting all were anathematised as irreligious. Such were the
boasted " ages of Faith," when the culminating perfection of Chris-
tianity consisted in a dull, superstitious, unenquiring stolidity.

The Renaissance justifies its name of New Birth by its emergence
from the womb of this religious fanaticism. In every direction it
heralded a revival" of free activity and unrestricted enquiry.
Mediaeval obscuranticism, notwithstanding its cloke of religion, was
recognized in its true colours by the newer thinkers. Guido
Cavalcanti, e.g. compared the older ages of superstition to a church-
yard — the veritable abode of death and corruption. Petrarca, from
the scholar's standpoint, inveighs against the formalism and ignorance
of preceding Christianity; while Giordano Bruno in a well-known
, sonnet brands the typical religionism of Rome with the name of
Asinity. Led by thinkers such as these, the Renaissance introduced
a revival into every domain of human activity. In Poetry, Music,
Painting, Architecture, as well as in Literature and Philosophy, there
was a gradual abandonment of old forms, of antiquated ideas, methods

General Causes. 77

and standards. Instead of regarding the earth as a gloomy prison r
men began to appreciate the beauties of Nature, to take delight
in the changes of the seasons, in the pleasures of rural life, to speak
with due poetic rapture of the beauty of flowers, and the melody of
birds, to describe in exquisite word-painting the manifold charms of
natural scenery. Petrarca's description of the lovely Vale of
Vaucluse, and the inimitable sketches — like cabinet pictures — of the
wooded valleys and rivers round Certaldo, with which Boccaccio
embellishes his Decameron, are illustrations of this new appreciation
of Nature. Instead of confining their studies to devotional and ascetic
works men began to manifest a taste for Humane Literature and the
fine Arts. Instead of expending their physical strength on penitential
discipline and self-torture, they listened to the dictates of Nature, and
adopted the opposite regime of music, feasting and dancing.

Nor was this resuscitation of a new world of joy and beauty ex-
clusively a product of reaction. In part it was also spontaneous, one
effect among the countless others of the general excitation and fer-
ment of the period. An additional impulse, from an extraneous
source, was moreover imparted to it by the revival of Classical Litera-
ture. Men were not long in discovering the harmony that existed
between humanistic studies and their newly-awakened impulses.
Horace, Martial, Ovid, Tibullus were nearer to their sympathies than
the monastic teaching to which their fathers listened. It was out
of this deep feeling for Naturalism, together with the Classical ism that
made Pagan Art and Literature the single standard of Perfection for
the Renaissance, that Italian Art took its rise. The Paintings of
Masaccio, Da Vinci, RafFael and del Sarto, the Sculpture of Donatello,
Sangallo and Michael Angelo, and the Architecture of Bramante,
Michael Angelo and Brunelleschi are as much a reaction against
Asceticism, and a product of Free-thought as the Decameron or the
Mor garde Maggiore.

The breach between Asceticism and Humanism which began out-
side the Church, and in defiance of her teaching soon extended itself to
the Papacy, and generated that antagonism between her teaching and
her practice which assumed so portentous an aspect in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. However highly the Popes of the Renaissance
esteemed Asceticism as the ally of superstition and sacerdotalism,
they were in private life as much admirers of Humanism as the Free-
thinking leaders of the movement. And as their boast of infallibility
might be alleged to be more conclusively demonstrated by their con-
duct than by their official utterances, the reaction against Asceticism
had so far a right to claim the sanction of the power that contributed
so much to its origin.

78 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

REACTION AGAINST SACERDOTALISM.

Among its other resuscitations and revivals the Renaissance gave
new birth to Humanity. The results of Sacerdotalism are to
obliterate and distort man, his nature, his feelings, his wants and
his sympathies ; the aim of the Italian Revival, in this aspect har-
monizing with the spirit of Christ, was to restore to him those rights
and that consideration which are inherently his due. Hence arose
gradually a higher estimate of conduct and practice, as distinct from
speculation and belief; and a tendency to assess the merit of the latter
by the worth of the former. This I need hardly remind you is the
very opposite method to that pursued by Roman Christianity. Acting
on the erroneous principle that ethical conduct is determined pri-
marily by intellectual propositions or metaphysical formula, she
insisted in the first instance on correct belief, or what she declared
to be such. Orthodoxy being thus established as the chief virtue of
Christians, soon arrogated to herself the claim of being their only
virtue. From the point of view of sacerdotalism and unscrupulous as-
cendancy Romanism was no doubt right. Whatever her lack of
ethical perception there was no deficiency in the selfish astuteness
which has ever been the ruling principle of her action. Every auto-
cratic despotism, secular as well as sacred, instinctively multiplies laws,
restrictions and prohibitions in order not only to the assertion of its
prerogative, but to make the obedience exacted from its subjects more
complete and submissive. But, in the interests of freedom and
Christian morality, nothing could well have been more disastrous.
Its inevitable outcome was to establish that divorce between Ethics
and religion which is still the plague-spot of Roman Catholicism. How
distinctly this feature is marked on the Church of the Renaissance
it is needless to point out. Protestant Church historians have not
been backward in expatiating on a theme which #so completely justi-
fies their theological standpoint. Nor was the incongruous spectacle
of a religion indirectly inculcating immorality lost on the free-
thinkers of the Renaissance. The facilities the Church conceded to
crime and moral laxity, by means of her doctrines and the examples
of her Popes and clergy, forms the one favourite and inexhaustible
topio of all the Italian Novelists of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. Nor was the ruthless severity she meted out to trifling
dogmatic aberrations suffered to pass unnoticed. We shall have
to touch this subject again when we come to Boccaccio's Decameron.
Meanwhile we have an interesting illustration of the Church's
different method of regarding dogmatic and ethical obligations, re-
spectively, in the promises of Innocent HI. to those who took part

General Causes. 79

in the crusade against the Albigeois. The savage followers of
Simon de Montfort, for the ruthless massacre of peaceable and help-
less citizens, were rewarded with a remission of all their sins from
the hour of their Baptism up to that time. They*were also absolved
from the payment of their debts, even though they had sworn to
pay them. It is almost impossible to believe that such a flagrant
mockery of the first principles of Christianity and Natural Religion
was ever perpetrated. But the instance proves — whenever the claims
of orthodoxy and humanity seem to come in conflict— rather the rule
than the exception in the history of the Papacy. The well known
sale of indulgences to build the church of St. Peter, which ha pp il y
brought about the Reformation, is another example of the subser-
viency of moral to sacerdotal requirements. If this was the con-
duct of leading Roman hierarchs — of Popes, Bishops and Councils,
who blasphemously claimed to be guided by the Holy Ghost — the
knowledge of the people could scarce be of a higher quality ; nor was
their behaviour likely to be influenced by more unselfish considera-
tions. The story told by Poggio in his Facetice 1 of the brigand who
in his confession passed over many murders and deeds of violence, and
dwelt with the deepest remorse and penitential unction on the sin of
having inadvertently swallowed a few drops of milk during Lent, is
one example, out of many, both of the popular recognition of the prin-
ciples by which the Papacy was dominated, and of the satire and
invective employed to attack it.

It is due to the men of the Renaissance to say that without any
profound reverence for Religion as a speculative creed, they fully
recognized the mischievous character of this teaching. If Chris-
tianity had ceased to dominate and ameliorate human conduct, of
what earthly use was it? If the salt had lost its savour wherewith
could it be salted ? They saw that Romanism had not only failed in
the ethical part of its mission, but had become itself a central agency
and propagator of Qvery species of immorality. Regarding the matter
ironically, they might, like Abraham the Jew in Boccaccio's novels,
have considered the prosperity of Rome, notwithstanding its tur-
pitude, as a mark of special Divine Protection; but looking at it
earnestly they could not help admitting the failure of Roman
Christianity at the precise point where failure is most disastrous.
Judging the creed by its results, all arguments derived from its purity,
antiquity, apostolicity, or other supposed sanctions were worse than
useless. What authoritative intellectual proposition could by any
possibility justify inhumanity ? What relation could exist between

1 Edition Liseux., vol. i. p. 114.

80 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

purity of Faith and impurity of Life that was not subversive of
both ? or what Dogma, or dogmatic system could claim to over-ride
the natural rights, feelings and duties of man ? We cannot feel sur-
prised that the Creed which sheltered such abuses should have been
assailed, that the Free-thought of the Renaissance should have at-
tacked the spurious Christianity of Rome. We are apt to blame the
licence of speculation and action on the part of the leading thinkers
of the Renaissance, but the fault is in reality that of the Church.
Professing to join in indissoluble links both creed and conduct, she
had for her selfish purposes relaxed the claims of the latter and more
important moiety ; and the men of the Renaissance could hardly have
done less than free themselves also from the bonds of the former.
No doubt other causes were in existence which contributed to a
similar result, e.g. the prevailing conception of liberty, derived from
political struggles, and an exaggerated persuasion of the claims of
Nature (though this was also as we have seen a reaction against
Ecclesiasticism) but the primary cause of the Decadence of Dogmatic
belief, and the Anti-christianity of the Renaissance, is to be found
in the Church's own inversion of the principles of Christ, the sub-
ordination of Ethical to Intellectual rectitude, and the gradual
elimination of the less important of the two co-efficients, which was
the unavoidable outcome of that position. Besides, even setting aside
divergent standpoints, the men of the Renaissance only followed, in
their licentious lives, the examples set before them by their clerical
teachers ; and they did not add to their other immoralities the master
vice of hypocrisy.

Nor were these thinkers without numerous examples of moral
rectitude outside the bounds of dogmatic Christianity, and, so far, of
the independence of ethical practice in respect of speculative belief.
Larger acquaintance with classical antiquity disclosed the noble roll
of names of virtuous heathens such as e.g. Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Aristides, and countless others whose lives would have adorned any
religion. Islam ism too, notwithstanding the opprobrium Christi-
anity continually poured upon it, abounded in examples of men, both
rulers and subjects, whose lives were models of rectitude and purity.
The justice, benignity and tolerance of Saladin passed into a proverb
at a time when the lives of Popes and Cardinals had become a scan-
dalous byword through the length and breadth of Christendom. How
much the same recoil against excessive speculation, to the prejudice of
ethical duty, contributed to the German Reformation, as well as to
various ineffectual attempts within the Church itself, we need not
now inquire; the general subject belongs to the domain of Church
History. I will only observe that the same inclination to regard

General Causes. 81

Belief as superior to Practice, to over-estimate the influence of specu-
lative notions on human action, and to despise other motive principles
which help to determine the conduct of men, still prevails in Roman
Catholicism ; and, by means of that Church, has become an hcereditas
damnosa more or less disseminated throughout the religious commu-
nities of Europe, even those that claim the appellation of Pro-
testant. But we must not pass over one notable result of this
severance of morality from religion on the part of the Church, i.e.
it was attended by a revived interest in all social and ethical
questions. Christianity, having abjured for her own selfish purposes,
the humanitarianism which formed her true starting-point, the
mischief was immediately rectified by the social conscience of Euro-
pean Society. There is indeed in human history, as in the consti-
tution of the individual man, a principle of compensation by means
of which the functions of an atrophied or diseased organ may be
discharged by another ; and few things are more striking in the philo-
sophical contemplation of the Renaissance, than the renewed attention
paid to moral questions, and the crop of ethical terms with concep-
tions unrelated to religion, which seemed to spring up on every side.
The phenomenon is like that which we find in the History of Greece,
when the popular notions of the Olympian deities, and their
position as the moral dictators of humanity, having been refuted by
the Eleatics and Sophists, an immediate investigation into Ethical
questions was started by Sokrates and his school. No doubt this
curiosity on the part of the Renaissance thinkers formed a portion of
the general spirit of inquiry which distinguished it, and which inves-
tigated every subject matter of human interest or knowledge. But
the stress on Ethical questions was especially marked, as if they
were anxious to restore the regulative principles of human morality
which the Church had bartered away for sordid gain. As might
have been anticipated, one feature of this Ethical . activity is the
variety of moral terms and their significations to which it gave birth,
though they are all assumed to share a restraining and beneficial
influence. Thus we have virtue, honour, fidelity, prudhommie, and
other moral qualities, instead of the usual "Cardinal" and Theological
virtues insisted on ; while, instead of the sanctions of religion, appeal
is made to honour, fame, glory, fortune, patriotism, and other more or
less Pagan influences. As an illustration of the diverse senses in
which ethical terms were accepted by the thinkers of the Renais-
sance, we may take the word virtue. This term, used by classical
writers in the sense of manly excellence, and by the Church as the
epitome of all morality, is employed to signify any human merit on
which the writer lays stress, or which seems especially needed by the
vol. i. o

82 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

circumstances of the time. Macchiavelli employs the term as a
synonym for that combination of astuteness and power — that centaur
conjunction of lion and fox — which he so greatly reverenced. With
Niccolo Niccoli — the Sokrates or Florence who used to stop young
men in the streets and exhort them to virtue — the term signified the
study of Classical Literature. Pandolfini, again, defines the term as
1 all gaiety and grace.' Where an aesthetic conception of it seems
implied the same author adds that ' it proceeds from a necessary law
of our nature, not from the command of any superior authority. 71
Ouicciardini, with his Stoic philosophy, uses the word in its strictly
ethical meaning ; saying that together with Intellectual advantages it
constitutes the summum bonumof humanity, 2 while Stephen Guazzo,
in his ' Dialoghi Piacevole,' makes it include all theological as well
as moral excellencies, enumerating among its effects the undertaking
of long pilgrimages by land and sea ! 3 Similarly the word ' honour '
receives a variety of meanings, though generally it is used as at
present as a kind of social lay principle of restraint in cases where
religious principles are either inappropriate or distrusted. As we
shall again have to notice, in the case of Gharron and others, the substi-
tution of secular or at least un theological principles, as moral incentives
and deterrents, for the effete pfrecepts and sanctions of the Church,
I need not now pursue this subject further. Enough will have been
said to show the working of Free-thought in the ethical conceptions
of the Renaissance ; and to note how this stress on moral questions
was caused by the perversion of the mainsprings of human conduct on
the part of Papal Christianity.

REACTION AGAINST DOGMA.

But this perversion was far from being the only one of which the
Church was guilty. As part of the reaction we are now considering
against its creed as well as its practice, we must point out the justifi-
cation it derived from the perversion of dogma. The development
of Christianity from its few rudimentary elements in the teaching of

1 Villari, Macchiavelli, p. 195.

* Ouicciardini, Op. Ined., vol. x. p. 108.

8 P. 102. The same writer, though an orthodox Romanist, is full of the
enthusiasm of morality which distinguishes all the earnest thinkers of the
Renaissance. This is the way e.g. in which he addresses Virtue. " O virtu
immaoulata, O virtu santa, O virtu cui non si pu6 dare altro maggior titolo
che di virtuosa, qual mente sia giamai che & pieno ti capisca, qual lingua che
con dignita t'essalti? qual Homero, qual Marone, qual Tullio, o quel Demos-
thene che secondo i tuoi grandi meriti con finissimo inchiostroti lodi, ti canti,
ti celebri, t' innalzi et ti coroni? ' etc., etc.— Dialoghi, p. 103.

General Causes. 83

Christ, we have more than once noticed. Here it is important to
mark that this monstrous superstructure was a growth in certain
given directions. Like some kinds of geological strata, it reveals, on
examination, certain well-marked lines of cleavage which denote the
manner in which it was originally formed. An investigation of these
( planes of stratification ' is essential for our purpose, because it is
along them, as in so many directions of least resistance, that incisive
criticism and free- thought are found to run. So that, regarding the
Renaissance as a disruption of the older fabric of Catholic Theology,
we shall find that the actual fractures followed the course marked out
for them by the Free-thought of the period. The evolution of Roman
Christianity then took place on the following main lines : —

1. In the direction of Inscrutability and Supernaturalism.

2. „ of excessive Christology.

3. „ of materialism.

4. „ of spiritual ascendancy and material advantage.

1. Every Revelation, in the usual sense of the word, must include
elements of a supernatural kind. In an universe constituted like our
own and with human faculties of such spiritual and imaginative reach
as we possess, a religion divested of supernaturalism would be incon-
gruous. Even the primary article of all religions — belief in God — is
itself encompassed with mystery. Yet there is scarce anything more
striking in Christ's own teaching than the little stress He places
on the merely thaumaturgic and mysterious elements of His mission.
On every attempt to enhance the natural marvels of His life and works
He repeatedly throws cold water. As the Son of man, He insists on His
humanity, and for the most part keeps the consciousness of His -divinity
in the background. But the Christian Church started with a directly
opposite tendency. From the first manifestation of excessive zeal on
the part of Christ's immediate followers — who were ready to magnify
His ordinary acts into miracles and to discern mysteries in his sim-
plest utterances— down to the Council of Trent, the course of Christian
Theology has been in the direction of supernaturalism. Allowing
such a tendency to be in harmony with some of the instincts of human
nature, and to be common to every religion that possesses a history,
its excess is undoubtedly at variance with other human rights of not
less importance, and is opposed to the advance of mature civilization
and enlightenment. No law of human progress is more satisfactorily
ascertained than that which binds it, in the relation of cause and
effect, to the diminution of the Supernatural and the simplification of
the Mysterious. I am far from saying that these elements can ever
be eliminated from human knowledge and belief. In some respects

84 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

indeed they are perpetually increasing, but we can so far limit their
scope as to prevent their interference with freedom of thought, or the
legitimate advance of human knowledge. A tendency therefore to
super-naturalize needlessly and obtrusively must be accepted as an
infallible token of sacerdotalism, and ipso facto of religious deterior-
ation. To point out in detail how this tendency grew in the Church,
what circumstances were in its favour, its pernicious effect in render-
ing man the abject slave of superstition, would be in reality to write
the whole of Church history. It is enough to remark that the common
aim of all ecclesiastical authorities was to generate that passive ac-
quiescence in unlimited dogma which was tantamount to the abne-
gation of all thought and reason. Councils e.g. claiming the guidance
of the Holy Ghost so elaborated and subtilized the more speculative
aspects of Christianity, and affirmed their decisions so imperiously,
that it must have seemed to an impartial thinker as if the sole
mission of Christianity was to formulate a series of metaphysical
enigmas and insist on their unconditional acceptance on the part of
humanity. The more incredulous, incomprehensible and self-contra-
dictory any dogma, the greater its chance of adoption by the Church.
Faith, in the sense of unenquiring receptivity, being regarded as the
main virtue of Christians, its value and merit were enhanced in direct
proportion to the inconceivability of its object. Hence every new
dogma, as it received the authentication of Pope or Council, became
further removed from the sphere of human ideas and interests. Every
new definition, refining upon abstractions and distinctions which had
already attained an extreme point of tenuity, became the nucleus of
fresh mysteries and inscrutabilities, and thereby an additional incubus
on the over-weighted human reason. Christian Theology in mediaeval
times was doubtless sustained, in her stress on excessive supernatural-
ism, by the fact that secular knowledge also laboured under a similar
burden, as we have already noticed. But the appeal to extreme super-
naturalism is more mischievous in Theology than in Science, for the
very reason that its principle is inherent in the former, whereas in
the latter supernatural theories are accidental and are certain to be
qualified sooner or later by other natural tests and sanctions to
which all science must defer.

Of excessive supernaturalism the inevitable outcome is gross super-
stition, in other words intellectual thraldom of the most debasing and
pernicious kind. Granting the existence of theological inscrutabilities,
they must at least be real, not fictitious. Like the ultimate truths
of Philosophy and Science they must be attained by the independent
action of the intellect operating with freedom upon them, not enforced
ab extra and on purely a priori grounds. No hierophant or ecclesi-

General Causes. 85

astical despot has a right to demand deference to an inexplicable
mystery before the grounds and extent of the mysteriousness have
been carefully scrutinized and determined. History swarms with
examples of the mischief which invariably attends the passive recep-
tion of marvels and authoritative dicta, from whatever source emanat-
ing. And this mischief is greater in Theology on account of the
sacred inviolable character pertaining to the very notion of the super-
natural. Resistance to its behests immediately assumes the portentous
aspect of * fighting against God.' Few religious thinkers, in any time,
possess sufficient critical power, combined with intellectual indepen-
dence, to discriminate between the possible supernatural germ, and the
undoubted human agency which arrogates to itself the power of
diffusing and imparting it. The latter must always be a matter of
criticism to many who are content to accept the former as a general
principle. The channels to which the belief of the middle ages
ascribed the function of communicating supernatural powers were
many. Dreams, lots, astrological influences, magical rites, ecclesiastical
offices were all credited with miraculous powers, and most of them
were openly or secretly wielded by the Church. Some of the popes
even were supposed to possess magical and necromantic powers.. The
result of this excessive supernaturalism was ani abjeot superstition,
which although dignified by the euphonious title of ' Faith/ was pro-
ductive of many unmitigated evils. The idea, in short, had become an
intolerable yoke on the feelings, thoughts and desires of Christendom,
repressing every movement of free intellectual activity, paralysing
every action of human life, destroying every generous impulse, viti-
ating every source of innocent enjoyment, transforming Deity into a
capricious and sullen tyrant, and changing Nature into a veritable
Inferno whose forces were supposed to be wielded by beings equally
inscrutable and malignant.

Against this exaggerated supernaturalism, the Free-thought of the
Renaissance was a justifiable and sorely-needed recoil. With the
emancipation it effected from religious, there was a progressive liber-
ation from secular, superstition, as far as one was independent of the
other. No doubt the process was very gradual. All the leaders of
the Renaissance are more or less believers in supernatural agencies.
In many cases men who had thrown off every vestige of deference
to the Church and the priest yet trembled before the wizard, the
astrologer, or the necromancer. Nor need we feel surprise at the
transference to Nature of marvellous powers hitherto shared largely
by the Church. To the child-like intellect of mediaeval times, Nature
was an unexplored temple of mystery, her real marvels and her more
ordinary processes were alike contemplated through a veil of mingled

86 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

awe and wonderment, but she possessed over the Church the advan-
tage of laying herself open to investigation and experiment, and of
not relying exclusively on the ipse dixiU of Popes and Councils. 1 The
reaction against the supernatural ism of the Church was certain, in
time, to diminish the marvellous aspects of Nature ; especially when
truer conceptions of her irreversible laws began to gain ground. If
thinking men began their career of skepticism by distrusting exorcism,
the miraculous powers of relics, the genuineness of winking Madonnas
and the other paraphernalia of sacerdotalism, they could hardly fail
to apply the same wholesome doubt to dreams, comets, astrological
signs, and magical rites. There was thus a progressive antagonism
against the supernatural, which taking its rise in the Church, extended
itself to every province of human knowledge and feeling that groaued
under the intolerable weight of a similar incubus. We must admit
that this reaction in the Renaissance became itself extravagant. Be-
cause the Church had overstrained the principle of the supernatural,
* it was rashly concluded that it had no real existence. Because relics,
' charms, miraculous powers were found deceptive, the very foundations
of Christianity and all Religion, were called in question. But for
this abuse the Church itself is primarily responsible. The excessive
naturalism of Renaissance Free-thought is a legitimate effect of the
extravagant supernaturalism of Christianity that preceded and in-
duced it.

2. Another main line of dogmatic development which provoked a
reaction in the Renaissance, is what I have taken leave to call the
exaggerated Christology of the Fathers and the Councils of the Church,
I mean the ever-increasing tendency to confine the work of Christ,
together with 'the principles and results of his teaching, to their most
narrow and partial significance, instead of including the larger aspects
and interests suggested by the whole universe, or entire humanity.
A particular revelation of authoritative truth must have, in respect
of time and place, a historical and local basis ; but the very claim to
universality implied in the words ' truth,' * authority,' will* always
tend to merge its actual origin in a wider conception of its real object
and destiny. The Romish Church on the whole not only failed to
grasp this unsectarian aspect of Christianity, but on the contrary
directed all its efforts to the task of still further limiting the specu-
lation and privileges of the Church. What was historical and tempo-
rary in the origin of Christianity she did her utmost still further to
circumscribe. The Jewish exclusiveness against which Christianity
was a protest, had again found a place in the perverted development of

1 This aspect of Nature is frequently insisted on by Giordano Bruno.

General Causes. 87

the latter religion ; and Papal Rome was the worthy successor of the
Jerusalem of the Pharisees. A striking instance of this unchristian
sectarianism is found in the stress on the false and mischievous
maxim, ' Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,' than which no greater libel has
ever been uttered against the Eternal, or the Providential government
of the universe. Another instance is the gradual substitution of the
worship of Christ and the Virgin for that of God the Father, in direct
opposition both to the letter and spirit of Christ's own teaching. No
doubt the larger intellects among the schoolmen were, as we have
seen, able to oppose this limited view of Christianity. Men like
Scotus Erigena and Aquinas were not likely to merge the conception
of the universe, the sums total of space and time, into the narrow
bounds of a few historical events. But intellects like theirs, capable
of taking a philosophical view of Christianity were rare, and did not
exercise a great influence on the main body of Christian teachers.
This enlarged conception of Christian truth gives us the real sig-
nificance of the Pantheism to which so many of the powerful minds
among the schoolmen were really inclined. They were compelled, in
order to make the limits of Christianity correspond with the larger
bounds of the universe in space and time to infinitize, to contemplate
the historical fabric of Christianity in Spinozistic terminology ' sub
specie cBternitatis. 1 In this respect the metaphysical tendencies of
Renaissance Free-thinkers, — men like Pomponazzi, Bruno and Vanini
— are akin to the efforts and aspirations of the noblest intellects
among the schoolmen. Though operating from dissimilar standpoints,
and with varying ideas as to the scope of their attempts, both take
a broad view of the real character and destiny of Christianity. Both
endeavour to refine its materialism and spiritualize its literalism,
both seek to universalize its partial teachings, and, to rationalize
its extreme dogmas. So that the pantheistic tendencies which dis-
tinguish the metaphysics of the Renaissance, and which I regard as
a reaction against Roman sectarianism, found a point of support and
so far of justification among leading thinkers of the Church itself.

3. But the Renaissance was also a reaction against another deteriora-
tion of Christianity. I mean the evolution of its dogma in the direction
of materialism. In this case again there was a distinct conflict be-
tween the original germ and its outgrowth. Christianity in its pri-
mary form was an appeal to the religious consciousness, the spiritual
perceptions of mankind. Its Deity and its worship were alike
spiritual. But the Church unhappily started on the opposite path
of anthropomorphism and materialism. This was especially the case
in her presentation of popular theology ; for the metaphysical training
of her ablest schoolmen sufficed to preserve them from gross and pue-

88 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

rile conceptions of transcendental truths. In mediaeval times thitf
development of Christian dogma, in the direction of extravagance of
conception and coarseness of expression, assumes a portentous and re-
pulsive aspect. Partly, no doubt, this must be ascribed to the rude
manners of the time. Theology had become brutalized by association
with men of brutal passions and ideas, and by having for its teachers
a clergy in no respect above the vulgar crowd. Mainly, however, it
was only the climax of the dogmatic growth which the Church itself
had initiated. Councils, Fathers and Popes, not content with promul-
gating speculative doctrines and forcing them on Christians, had vied
with each other in excessive definition, extravagant elaboration, and
grotesque illustrations of Christian truth. What was spiritual they
materialized, what was symbolical they interpreted as real, what was
Divine they humanized, and what was human they brutalized. It
could scarcely be expected but that the crowd of laymen, ill-educated
and superstitious, would endeavour to emulate their ecclesiastical
superiors. Accordingly we have, in the centuries preceding the Re-
naissance, ideas of Christianity, the objects of its worship, its rites
and its dogmas, such as would well befit the most savage fetish
worshippers that ever lived ; and which go far to justify the scornful
unbelief of the Renaissance. It would be difficult to name a province
of Roman Christianity that was not vitiated by animalism and
materialism. All its religious rites were surrounded with sensuous
accessories, as if its declared object had been to trail supersensual
beings and truths in the filth of human frailty and corruption. All
its dogmas were materialized, in many cases to a repulsive and obscene
degree. The Divine personality of Deity was so limited and humanized
that there was absolutely no scope left for His relations to the uni-
verse. The doctrine of the Trinity was interpreted as a rank and
unmitigated Tritheism; and when the worship of the Virgin and
saints and martyrs was added, Romanism became, what it has since
remained, an exaggerated Polytheism. The dogma of the Incarnation
especially suffered from the crude animalism of its interpreters. It
was investigated, discussed, and explained with such sensuous par-
ticularity and revolting detail 1 that its spiritual significance was
utterly lost. The Christian sacraments were transformed into
charms ; and their symbolical elements were converted into material
agents operating by material methods. They were thus placed on an
equality with magical rites ; and the Christian priest became a kind
of ecclesiastical juggler or wizard. All persons and objects sub-

1 Comp. on this subject Hone's Ancient Mysteries, and the passages collected
by Bartoli, I JPrimi due Secole, p. 206.

General Causes. 89

mitted to priestly consecration were assumed to undergo a change
in their material constituents resembling that which the loadstone
effects in a piece of steel. The climax of this tendency was reached
in the doctrine of transubstantiation. On no dogma of the Church
was the wit and raillery of Renaissance Free-thinkers expended more
readily than on this. They recognised the extravagance of sacer-
dotal pretension underlying it, and were not backward in reductio
ad ab8urdum applications of it. Nor was this gross carnality limited
to this life. The world to come was conceived from a similarly
sensuous standpoint. The doctrine of the Resurrection, e.g. was
asserted and explained in a repulsively hyper-physical sense. The
glories of heaven, the pains of purgatory and hell, were bodily and
fleshly in the greatest conceivable degree. In each case material
beings were supposed to be acted upon by material and physical
agencies. Dante's Inferno, with its incongruous mixture of physical
elements and spiritual qualities, represents that point of development
when the grosser conceptions of mediaeval times as to the world be-
yond the grave were assuming a less extravagant form. He is thus
a leader of the Renaissance, in its reaction against the materialism of
the Church. Not that the thinkers in this movement were in every
instance defenders of a more spiritual conception of Christian doc-
trine, or that they cared very much for any form of religion. But
they were keen-sighted enough to detect the incongruity of impalp-
able abstractions represented in terms of tangible sensuous existences,
and the inherent absurdity of spiritual agencies operating by material
means. They refused to yield that absolute unbelief in the evidence
of their senses which an alleged change of essence in a given sub-
stance, accompanied by a self-evident similarity of attributes, de-
manded. Perhaps they were inclined to lay too much stress on the
dictum, that the non-apparent and non-existent must be judged by the
same test. But it cannot be doubted that the general direction of their
skepticism, and their supreme contempt for the sacerdotal jugglery
which had so long deluded Christendom, were both abundantly justified.
Besides this opposition to theological materialism, grounded upon
reason and common sense, there was, in the case of some of the fore-
most among Renaissance thinkers, a philosophical source whence
proceeded a similar antagonism. The tendency to Pantheism, which
marks so strongly the Free-thought of the period, was a recoil against
the materialistic, as it was against the sectarian, conception of
mediaeval Christianity. Men like Cardinal de Cusa and Giordano
Bruno demanded a freer range for their religious imagination, a more
spiritual direction for their aspirations, than were supplied by the
materialism of Rome. The souls of these Idealists, filled with the

90 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

immensity of the creation, revolted from the popular representation
of Deity as a grey-headed old man seated in a chair with a globe in
his hand. The only conception of the Incarnation of which they could
approve was the metaphysical one of St. John's Gospel, with perhaps
an additional stage in the direction of transcendentalism. For the
coarse carnality of such dogmas as transubstantiation, the immacu-
late conception, and other figments of a similar kind, they entertained
a well-grounded horror. If the idealism of such thinkers tended
occasionally, to annihilate historical Christianity, it certainly saved
them from the still greater degradation .of abject materialism and fetish
worship. Their heresy, if so it must be termed, was at least the pro-
duct of thought and reason, and not the outcome of brutish stolidity.
Their error, even if it could be proved, enjoyed the sanction of
philosophy, while the opposition of spirit to flesh and letter was in
accordance with the highest principles of Christianity.

4. But the perversions of Christian dogma already considered, i.e.
in the direction of sectarianism and materialism, were not those which
were first suspected and assailed by the Free-thinkers of the Re-
naissance. The corruption of Roman Christianity first approved it-
self to the popular mind by the astute adaptation of its dogmas to
purposes of spiritual aggrandisement and material advantage. While
the truths and duties of primitive Christianity were of so simple
a character as almost to dispense with a sacerdotal caste, all the
energies of Romanism were directed to the inculcation of belief and
duties which would make such a caste absolutely indispensable. The
Church had thus a direct motive in increasing the number and en-
hancing the inscrutability of her dogmas. Their inconceivability
gave her teaching an esoteric flavour, and increased the importance
of the clergy. Doctrines, like sacred relics — sharing in many cases
an equal authenticity, were carefully enclosed in caskets, and kept,
so to speak, under clerical lock and key. They were intended not to
be handled and criticized, but surveyed reverently from a distance, and
worshipped. Their depositories, no matter of what material, might
perhaps be kissed, but even these were not to be touched by profane
fingers. Nor was it only in speculative belief that the intervention
of the priest was indispensable; it was not less so in the practical
concerns of ordinary life. In mediaeval times, as in Catholic
countries now, hardly an action could be performed without priestly
intermediation. It was not merely the religionizing every secular
act, the consecration of human life, that was aimed at, though
this might have been the ostensible pretence put forward to justify
such interference; but the complete effaceraent of the Christian
individuality — the entire surrender of all thought and volition into

General Causes. 91

clerical domination. With the reaction against this religious thral-
dom men began to observe how uniformly all the dogmas of Papal
Christianity tended in the same direction of ascendency and profit.
Not a dogma or a religious rite pertained to the Church which
she had not directly or indirectly diverted into a method of in-
creasing her power or filling her coffers. Men readily suspect
good offices or beliefs which redound to the personal advantage
of those who confer or maintain them. There is no inherent con-
nexion between speculative verities and material silver and gold.
To be acceptable, truth must not be entirely divested of dis-
interestedness. But such unselfish truths were rare in mediaeval
Romanism. On the other hand, all the blessings of Christianity were
retailed like huckster's wares. Divine grace, pardon and love — the
permanent and indefeasible attributes of Deity — were objects of sor-
did traffic. Nor was the sale of such spiritual commodities limited
to this life. The blessings of the future world — immunity from hell
and purgatory — formed one of the most lucrative sources of Papal
income. One effect of this conversion into articles of barter of all
dogmatic beliefs was to increase in the minds of intelligent laymen
that feeling of indifference for their speculative import which was
first engendered by sacerdotal pretension and exclusiveness. But the
suspicion awakened by the mercantile character of Church dogmas
extended itself in time to their philosophical and religious significance.
The two dogmas most questioned by the Italian Renaissance and the
Protestant Reformation were Immortality 1 and the Indulgences. In
both cases the controversy was originated by the excessive greed of
Rome. Men^ began to investigate the nature and reality of that
spiritual happiness of futurity which could enly be attained by a
lavish expenditure of present and terrestrial advantages, just as
Luther set on foot the Reformation by questioning the value of
heavenly pardons which might be secured for a little earthly silver.
I do not wish to credit the zeal of Renaissance thinkers against
the various perversions of Roman Christianity with uniformly pure
motives. Their object, it must be admitted, was almost entirely de-
structive. They made no pretence of supplying, as Luther tried to
do, by ajmrerfaith, truths which had become arrant falsities through
the sectarianism, the materialism and the selfishness of the Church.
Some of them, probably confounding the perverted development of
Christianity with its pure source, set their faces altogether against
it, and embraced Epicureanism or some other form of ancient thought

1 Comp. on this point Burckhardt, Cultur d. Renaissance Germ. ed. } vol. ii.
p. 812.

92 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

which best commended itself to their intellect. But they discerned,
as clearly as if they had adopted a religious standpoint, the innumer-
able mischiefs, political and intellectual as well as social and religious,
of which the Great Babylon was the centre. Although professedly
irreligious, they were not so far lost to a sense of ethical rectitude
and spiritual fitness as not to perceive the radical unsuitability of a
creed based upon selfishness and slavery, and sustained by ignorance
and obscurantism, to be the sole directress of all human speculation
and conduct. Pure negation, for the time being, was a preferable
anchorage to a faith whose disastrous influences were so positive
and unmistakable.

That this general recoil against Romish teaching should have
spared the clergy was not to be expected. Indeed in point of time and
of virulence of polemic the attack on ecclesiastics both preceded and
exceeded that which was directed against their dogmas. Nor is this
surprising. Doctrines are necessarily theories, or if alleged certainties
are mostly abstractions, but men who administer or are influenced
by them are concrete realities. They embody in a kind of incarna-
tion their influences. Hence the merits and defects of a creed are
more readily assessed, at least to popular comprehension, by its human
products and ministers than by any other method ; and attacks on
the clergy thus form the chief starting-point of all the Free-thought
of the middle ages. How general, and unhappily how well founded
this animosity was, our investigations have already told us. This
formed the subject of Goliard invective. Troubadours and Trou-
veres dealt with the same topic, Conteurs and Fabulists pursued
the same theme. When the theatre became secularized it was a
staple object of representation. The immunities of the clergy as
a privileged class were no longer of any avail. Popular common
sense, careless of subtle and theocratic distinctions between the man
and the priest, inferred the character of the creed from that of its
teachers. The wide separation of clergy and laity was a figment
that could have deceived only the most stolidly ignorant, and it is
one which virtually expired with the dawn of the Renaissance. The
assumed sources of clerical superiority were then freely questioned,
and their real nature and extent no less unreservedly canvassed. Of
learning they had ceased even in the thirteenth century to be exclusive
patrons. The study of classical authors, scholastic divinity, Arab
and Romance literature had become the common property of all the
forward thinkers of the period ; and in most of these subjects the
Romish priesthood was left far behind by the laity. The dissemina-
tion of learning by the Italian universities and schools served still
more to equalize the intellectual positions of the two orders. If the

General Causes. 93

clergy could thus arrogate no superiority in respect of attainment,
they could certainly claim none in respect of moral purity or rectitude
of conduct The shocking depravity of priests, monks and friars
forms the chief subject of all the Anti-Romanist literature of the
time. Their sole remaining prerogative — the special sacredness of
their office — was under the circumstances not likely to command
much reverence. If the tonsure, e.g. guaranteed no peculiar wisdom
or sanctity — if the assumption of sacred vows was frequently followed
by unusual turpitude — the mysterious graces assumed to be con-
ferred in either case might fairly be questioned. Foggio Bracciolini
satirically remarked that in the act of the tonsure priests ' parted
with not only their hair, but with their virtue and their conscience.'
As to the title of Saint, or the conception of holiness regarded as the
accompaniment of sacred functions, the feeling of the time might be
stated in Casti's lines : —

1 Lo chiamar Santo : allor di Santo il nome
Fu annesso di persona e di mestiere,
Non di costume e di virtu, siccome
Foscia a talun il Don diessi, e il Messere
Fer esser Santo uopo era sol le chiome
Cinte di mitra, o di tiara avere ;
Onde Vescovi, Fapi e somiglianti
volessero o no, tutti eran Santi.'

In this respect of anti-sacerdotalism, the Renaissance, like every
other great revolutionary movement, was largely leavened by ideas
not only of * liberty/ but of * fraternity and equality. 7 The long-con-
tinued distinction between clergy and laymen, and the rites by which
it was effected, were equally treated with disdain by the advanced
thinkers of the period. Just as Fetrarla poured his sarcasm on the
University degree which translated the blockhead into a philosopher,
so Foggio treats the ordination of sacred persons with similar con-
tumely. ' Hence the clergy/ he says * springing like mushrooms in
an hour are rapidly advanced to the highest dignities. Thus it very
frequently happens that you are obliged to venerate as a God a man
whom you have been accustomed to despise as a mean, abject, ignoble
and ill-bred character. By one word of the pontiff, the ignorant
become, in the estimation of the vulgar, learned; the stupid, wise; the
uninstructed, accomplished — though at the same time the real char-
acter of the men is precisely the same as it was before. 7 *

The same idea of essential equality between priests and people soon

1 La Papesse, Ed. Liseux, p. 62,

1 Comp. Shepherd's Life of Poggio Bracciolini, p. 286.

94 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

found its way into the popular sentiment. You will not need my
reminding you how fully the early Reformation literature, in Ger-
many and England, took cognizance of a principle which had already
been insisted on by the Literati and secular Free-thinkers of France
and Italy. Here e.g. are some lines from a Goliard poem, maintaining
that there will be no difference between clergy and laity in the day
of judgment : —

1 Cum perventum fuerit ad examen veri
Ante thronum stabimus judicis severi
Non erit distinctio laici vel cleri
Nulla nos exceptio poterit tueri.'

And in still stronger terms : —

4 Judicabit judices judex generalis
Nihil ibi proderit dignitas regalis
Sed feetorem sentiet pcenee gehennalis
Sive sit episcopus, sive cardinalis.' '

But it was not only the equality between the clergy and laity that
was insisted on by the Humanists. They turned the tables on their
clerical opponents and openly accused them of being the pests of Italy,
the chief causes of the manifold disorganizations political and re-
ligious from which that unhappy land suffered. Nor was this only
the opinion of men like Rabelais and Boccaccio, who made the clergy
the butt of their wit and raillery, but it was the opinion of austere
and un sensational writers like Guicciardini, Macchiavelli and Poggio
Bracciolini. Occasionally this anti-clerical animus assumed an ex-
treme form, as if it were directed against the office itself rather than
unworthy occupants of it. But as a rule the clergy were not back-
ward in affording opportunities and ample justifications for the satire
and invective of their foes. l3> obtain some idea both of the virulence
of the anti-clerical feeling which was common more or less to all the
Free-thinkers of the time, as well as of the justification that actually
existed for such a feeling, you might read, inter alia, Bracciolini's
Dialogues, especially that ' on hypocrisy.' 2 No doubt all the clergy
were not intended to be included in this general condemnation.
There were conspicuous instances of Bishops, Cardinals and even
Popes sympathizing, and so far as they might, actually co-operating
in the advance of humanism. Unluckily, however, these exceptions
were rare— far too rare to modify the position of antagonism which
Free-thought had rightly taken up against the clerical order. The
mass of the clergy were justly regarded as fanatical obscurantists,

1 Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, p. 58.

1 See Ed. Brown Fasciculus Rerum Expetend. el Fugiend., vol. ii. p. 571.

General Causes. 95

whose whole energies were bent on the perpetuation of the benighted
ignorance, the cruel bigotry and dark superstition from which the
Renaissance was, at least for a time, an auspicious deliverance.

I have thus endeavoured at some, though I hope not excessive,
length to marshal the causes direct and indirect which contributed
to the Free-thought of the Renaissance. Even our partial survey has
ascertained these to be of various kinds — political, religious, com-
mercial and literary. I am far from suggesting either that all those
we have considered are of equal importance, or that there may not
have been other important coefficients of which we have taken no
account. The Renaissance, we must remember, is a vast, complex,
many-sided movement, operating in different ways through the length
and breadth of Italy, and assuming, during the two or three centuries
of its short-lived existence, a varied and motley aspect. In North,
South and Middle Italy, only taking these larger divisions, the con-
ditions, political, religious and literary, differed so much that the
phenomena necessarily assumed, in each particular instance, a peculiar
character. Our task has been like the mapping of a large watershed
and indicating the various affluents and tributaries which flow into
the main stream. In doing this over an extensive, difficult and moun-
tainous track, it is not impossible that a survey like ours may have
been sometimes erroneous — that we have attached e.g. too much im-
portance to one tributary, too little to another — that in the multiplicity
of confluents we have sometimes mistaken the course of some minor
rivulet — that we have not been able, in every instance, to trace the
spring welling out of the mountain side through all its devious
wanderings to its final junction with the main river. Still I think
the chief currents of the common movement have been stated cor-
rectly. It only remains to take some note of the prominent characters
formed by this movement and who contributed materially to its
extension ; to watch the action of Free-thought, not so much as
influencing societies as moulding great men. Having surveyed the
noble field of the Renaissance, we complete our task by estimating
its noblest products ; and, as in duty bound, we begin at our next
meeting with : Dante.

CHAPTER n.

GENERAL CAUSES AND LEADERS.

Although neither as poet nor as thinker can Dante claim
a foremost position among the agencies that contributed to
the Renaissance, regarded as a movement of Free-thought, no summary
of that movement, however slight, could be considered complete which
took no account of the manifold and powerful influences exercised by
the Divina Commcedia in the fourteenth century. The outline of
Dante's painful history is so well known that it need not occupy our
time. Its main facts are impressed in deeply graven characters on
the pages of his great work. Hardly less clearly does the work bring
before us the many-sided aspects and forces of the Renaissance. It
is a kind of historical picture, or rather an enormous magic mirror,
which, under the fictitious reflection of the affairs, institutions and
personages of the unseen world, presents a complete and lively tableau
of the actual men and events pertaining to the Italy of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. In its pages we have chronicled the feuds
of Emperors and Popes; the struggles of sects and parties, political,
municipal and ecclesiastical ; the conflicts of institutions, mediaeval
and modern ; the rivalries of cities ; the religious crusades and com-
mercial enterprises of which Italy was then the European centre ;
the conflicting mental tendencies and teachings of the dark ages on
the one hand, and the Italian New-Birth on the other. The canvas
is instinct with life and movement. The scenery and accessories
may be extra-mundane, the actual personages whether denizens of
the Inferno or the Paradiso are of the earth earthy. This assimi-
lation of the seen and unseen, partly incongruous, partly the out-
come of a profound truth, makes the latter a fair reflection of the
former. Hence notwithstanding infernal circles and bolgias, the
Mount of Purgatory and the more idealistic scenes of the Paradiso,
the Divina Commcedia of Dante is almost as much a Comme'die
Humaine as that of De Balzac himself.

Dante's work therefore gives us the Renaissance still in the
making. It is a collection of its constitutive elements and materials

General Causes and Leaders. 97

brought together from so many distant regions of space and time,
each with its inherent attractions and repulsions, as they were being
mingled and concocted in the great crucible of Providence. As in a
critical moment of a battle, when rival hosts are entangled together
in inextricable confusion, it is impossible to foretell the event ; so the
philosophic reader of the Divina Comm&dia, when it was first pub-
lished, might w r ell have felt some difficulty in determining the real •
permanent issue of the imbroglio therein depicted. On a point of
vantage of nearly six centuries wo can now discern to what offspring
the political and mental throes of the period were really giving birth.
The outcome is typified in the arrangement of the three acts of the
Commcedia; for Dante's work, like the period of which it is so power- •
ful an exponent, was the transitional purgatory that separated the
infernal darkness and ignorance of Medievalism from the II Paradiso
of the Reformation, and modern culture and liberty.

One effect of the wide diversity of Dante's great work and its
Janus-like aspect to Medievalism on the one hand, and the new cul-
ture on the other, has been to throw doubt on the nature of his real
convictions. Pere Hardouin thought that the Commoedia was the
work of some anonymous disciple of Wiclif ! And a book was pub-
lished some twenty years since to prove that Dante was a * heretic,
a revolutionary and a socialist/ l On the other hand, the majority of
his critics regard him as an orthodox Catholic, though an uncompro-
mising denouncer of the temporal power, and the corruptions of the
Papacy. One thing at least is clear : neither Dante nor his work can
be called skeptical ; and only in a very limited and moderate degree
can they be said to possess elements of Free-thought. Not only was
Dante a dogmatist, but he was vehemently and passionately so.
First he was a dogmatist by nature and temperament ; secondly, in
his Commcedia 1 he conceives himself to possess a divinely authenti-
cated mission as an apostle and reformer of ecclesiastical abuses, but
a no less ardent defender of Romanist dogmas.

i. Dante's disposition is unmistakably depicted in his face: his
morose expression reveals the countenance of a man not only soured
by political disappointments, but animated by a spirit which, on due
occasion, could become fanatical. The disclosure of his features is not
belied by his life and writings. His political animosity against the
enemies of himself and his party rises to a pitch of ungovernable
exasperation. No doubt party spirit then ran high; and the ill-usage
Dante endured might well have provoked a nature far less sensitive

1 Dante htrttique, revolutionaire, et eocialiste, Revelations tTun Catholique sur
le moyen Aye, par E. Aroux. Paris 1864. See a short criticism of this work
in C. Cantu's CM eretici <V Italia, vol. i. p. 146 etc.

VOL. I. H

98 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

than his own ; still that the author of the Commcedia should have
been guilty of throwing stones at women and children whom he over-
heard calumniating his party, 1 is a melancholy illustration of the
intermingling of petty foibles with the sublimest excellencies in the
human character. On one occasion, when irritated in a philosophical
discussion, he employed the very unphilosophical response, l It is not
with arguments but with the knife that such brutal doctrines should
be answered.' 2 Against the towns and provinces of Italy by which
he conceived himself or his party had been aggrieved he expresses
himself with a rancour and malignity almost incredible. 3 Nor is this
extreme harshness confined to his personal and political foes; he is just
as severe to heretics and dissentients from the creed of the Church.
Theology, indeed, is a subject more vitally and permanently interest-
ing to Dante than the alternations of political parties in his beloved
Florence. The Commcedia is a handbook of mediaeval Catholic
dogma, just as Milton's Paradise Lost sets forth the creed of English
Puritanism of the seventeenth century. A contemporary epitaph
describes Dante : —

Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers.

And subsequent writers, like Ozanam, who have industriously col-
lected all the phrases and words in which Dante speaks of the dogmatic
teachings of the Church, 4 have no difficulty in confirming that verdict,
and establishing his religious orthodoxy. The very form of the poem
affords an admirable medium not only for touching on religious
dogmas, but for venting theological and personal likes and dislikes.
An imaginary Inferno and Paradiso presents unlimited scope, to the
man of warm imagination and strong feeling, for the rewards and
punishments of friends and foes. Not that we are to ascribe Dante's
allocation of infernal penalties entirely to personal feeling. We must
not forget that throughout the Commcedia he fancies himself the
divinely appointed minister 5 of heaven's own decrees. His consecra-
tion by St. Peter, to which he alludes twice in the 24th and 25th
Cantos of the Paradiso, is at least one source of the authoritative
tone in which he pronounces the doom of the lost in the Inferno, as
well as of his distribution of the trials and beatitudes in the remaining
two sections of his work. The 24th Canto of the Paradiso has a

1 The story is related in Boccaccio, Vita. Com p. Ozanam, Dante et la phU.
Cath. au XIII* Steele, p. 131. Dante's fiery temper is also the subject of th&
114th and 115th of Sacchetti's Xovelle, Ed. Barbera, pp. 454, 459.

1 Boccaccio, Vita. Comp. 11 Convito, iv. 14.

8 Comp. Leigh Hunt, Stories from the Italian Poets, vol. i.

4 Ozanam, Op. cit., chap, v., Ortkodoxie de Dante.

• On this subject see Ugo Foscolo, Discorso sul Testo, etc. pp. 79-82.

General Causes and Leaders. 99

special signification in its bearing on Dante's own belief. It purports

to contain his examination on the Christian faith by St. Peter,

previous to his consecration to the Laureate Apostleship of the.

Mediaeval Church. 1 Dante's definition of faith in this important \

passage is rigidly ecclesiastical, involving the unconditional subordi- J

nation of the reason. His own belief he announces as a good coin, as '

to whose mintage, * imago and superscription/ there could be no

question.

* Ed io : Si V ho si lucida, e si tonda
Che nel suo conio nulla mi s' inforsa.' 2

But there are other passages which intimate that Dante knew what
philosophic doubt was. Indeed, with his comprehensive far-seeing
intellectual vision, and his rare profundity of feeling, the absence of
all trace of such an experience would have been nothing less than an^
anomaly. Thus, in the passage just quoted — having assigned as evi-
dences of Christianity: 1. Bible Inspiration; 2. Supernatural miracles
— when he is pressed by St. Peter on the latter point he rather evades
it, and says that supposing Christianity had been promulgated with-
out miracles, this single marvel would make all others needless. 3 In
the 33rd Canto of the Purgatorio we have a still more noteworthy
passage on this subject, in -which the poet indicates that having long
pursued for himself the path of philosophy, and finding it unsatisfac-
tory for the noble reason of the lines : —

' Io veggio ben, che giammai non si sazia
Nostro 'ntelletto, se '1 ver non lo illustra '—

he at last has recourse to Beatrice and Religion, and on this authority
is persuaded that the Divine transcends the human. Moreover, wo
have something like the assertion of twofold truth in the words of
Beatrice herself, when she assures her lover that the appearance of
heavenly justice, to mortal eyes, as injustice, was an argument of faith
not of * heretical pravity.'

( Parere ingiusta la nostra giustizia
Negli occhi di mortale, 6 argomento
Di fede, e non d' eretica nequizia.' 4

In a similar spirit, she solves Dante's doubts as to the existence of
evil, by limiting omnipotence : —

1 Of. Ugo Foscolo, loc. cit., and Paradiso, Canto xxiv. and xxv.

* Par., Cant. xxiv. v. 8(3.
8 Par., Canto xxiv. Coinp. Essay on Augustine, Evenings with the Skejitics

(vol. ii.) f who often employs the same argument.

* Par., Canto iv. v. 67-69 ; and compare, on the passage, Bianchi's instructive
note, Commocdia, p. 532.

/'

\

ioo The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

4 Voglia assoluta non consente al danno :
Ma consentevi intanto, in quanto teme
Se si ritrse, cadere in piu affarmo.' 1

Dante is also aware that the intellect, even when it confines itself
to discovered truth, is * like a wild beast resting in its lair ' : a simile
whose singular truth and pointedness are amply attested by our
present skeptical investigations. Doubt, he philosophically remarks,
is not an accidental but an inherent property of truth, springing up
at its foot like a shoot from the trunk of a tree : —

4 Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo
Appi& del vero il dubbio : ed & natura,
Ch' al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo.' *

and serves the same purpose of helping us to attain a higher position.
Nor is he ignorant of the value of pure skeptical suspense, or of the
influence of current opinion on human feeling in misleading the in-
tellect :—

1 Che quegli fe tra gli stolti bene abbasso
Che senza distinzione afferma o niega
Cosi nell' un, come nell* altro passo
Perch* egl* incontra, che piu volte piega
L'opinion corrente in falsa parte
E poi V affetto lo intelletto lega.' 8

The cause of all erroneous conclusions, whether in philosophy or
theology, he attributes to want of skill in the investigator : —

4 Chi pesca per lo vero, e non ha 1' arte/ 4

Nevertheless, the final position of all truthful inquirers is not
doubt, but actual or complete attainment. For he asserts that the
intellect can and must attain truth ; though his reason for the opinion
is no stronger than the d priori one so often employed for the pur-
pose :—

* . . . e giugner puollo
Se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra. 1 5

This realized certitude however is the lot only of Christian in-
quirers ; it belongs only to the denizens of Paradise. On the other
hand, prolonged doubt, unsatisfied desire, is a punishment of the

1 Par., Canto iv. v. 109.
% * Ibid, v. 180.

8 Par., Canto xiii. v. 115, etc.
* Ibid, v. 123.
; : 8 Par., Canto iv. v. 128.

WW •

General Causes and Leaders. 101

Inferno, for the ancient heathens bewail their destiny in the plaintive
words : —

* Che senza speme vivemo in disio.' l

The conception underlying this single verse is of itself enough to
prove Dante's dogmatic bias ; and his inability to regard unrealized
aspiration and effort as anything but an infernal state. From this
condition of eternal hopelessness, that befel Gentile truth-seekers, he
takes occasion to urge on Christians passive acquiescence in dogma ;
and says that revelation was given in order to extinguish thirst for
knowledge. His words are a confirmation of what I have already v
stated : that Dante had an experimental knowledge of doubt. They j
suggest that he had himself applied his reason to solve some of the
speculative doctrines of the Church; and had been foiled in the
attempt. On the subject of Dante's belief — the passage is one of the
most-important in the Commoedia:—

1 Mat to 6 chi spera, che nostra ragione
Possa trascorrer la 'nfinita via,
Che tiene una Sustanzia in tre Persone

State con tent i, umana gente, al quia
Che se potuto aveste veder tutto
Mestier non era partorir Maria :

E disiar vedeste senza frutto
Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato
Ch* eternalmente e dato lor per lutto.' 3

Bat the complete proof of this disposition, and of his animus against\
all heretics and doubters, must always be based on the terrible punish- )
ments he allots them. The principles on which these decisions are /
based are neither consistent nor clear. There seems a division be-
tween Dante's ecclesiastical prejudices and his human sympathies.
On the one hand, the circle reserved for heretics and schismatics is
one of the lowest in the Inferno. 3 The perpetual cleaving of these
dividers of the truth, and especially the dichotomy of Mahomet, who
is curiously regarded as a dissentient or apostate from the Christian
faith, 4 is described with a particularity absolutely loathsome. Un-
baptized infants are consigned to hell as remorselessly as by Augus-
tine, though Dante does provide a limbics, an idea which the great

1 Inferno, Canto iv. v. 42.

* Fury., Canto iii. v. B4, etc.

8 Canto xxviii.

4 In one pf the metrical chronicles of the eleventh century, Mahomet is styled
a * heresiarch more potent than Arms.' Cf. A. Bartoli, Storia di Lett. ItaL y i.
p. 76. The conception of Mahomet as a schismatic is not however uncommon
in the mediaeval ages.

102 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Latin Father vehemently opposed. 1 The wisest and most virtuous
heathen are located in the Inferno : in a limbus of which Bouterwek
well remarked that it contains the * best Society ' of the whole
Dlvina Commcedia; while the upper regions of the Paradiso have no
worthier representatives of humanity than narrow-minded types of
mediaeval monkery, like SS. Dominic, Bernard and Peter Damianus.

(There is in most cases no distinction suggested between ethical and
speculative error; the latter being awarded a punishment equal to
that of the former. Arius and Sabellius are characterized in terms
of severity that a Church Council or a bigoted Latin Father could
hardly exceed. 8 No doubt Dante's mind was much exercised by the
fate of those who are involuntarily ignorant of Christianity; but his
final decision on the issue can hardly be styled either humane or
v Christian ; for he lays it down that all those born after the coming of
Christ are destined to hell. 3 An instructive example of the extent
to which Dante was prepared to go on the side of sacerdotalism, and
of his participation in some of the most mischievous conceptions of
his time, is the retribution awarded to Vanni Fucci, which is assigned
not so much on account of his crimes and bloodshed, as because he
Jiad robbed a sacristy ! *
/ But while Danto thus evinces, from his ecclesiastical standpoint,
■' the narrow mind and restless temper of a grand inquisitor, there is
! another aspect of his character which reveals him as a humanist and
! hater of spiritual tyranny, at least when manifested in an excessive
i form. However capricious might appear some of the judgments of
the Inferno, however personal others, there were many instances in
which his decisions were approved by the popular conscience. That
rapacious princes, and greedy and lustful prelates, should reap the
reward of their ill-doings was a proposition no believer in the exist-
ence of II Inferno was disposed to reject. The decrees of Minos and
Rhadamanthus, as expounded by their poetic secretary, purported in
many cases to rest on a purely moral basis. At least orthodoxy with
| all its claims was not regarded as an infallible preservative from
■ infernal penalties ; nor was non-Christianity an insuperable barrier

1 The limbus infantum in the early Church was a receptacle to which the
6ouls of unbaptized children were consigned, but in which they were supposed
to suffer no misery. The Council of Carthage a.d. 418, under the influence of
Augustine, condemned this doctrine, and deliberately proclaimed the Eternal,
perdition of all unbaptized infants. Cf. * Essay on Augustin,' Evenings with the
Skeptics, vol. ii. p. 200.

-* See Par,, Canto xiii.

• Par., Canto xix. On this subject comp. Skeptics of the French Rena'mance %
1 Essay on La Mothe le Vayer.'

4 Inferno, Canto xxiv.

General Causes and Leaders. 103

to the enjoyment of Paradise. So far the * power of the keys ' was
implicitly denied. A spiritual sovereignty unable to preserve its
own infallible chiefs from the penalties due to their misdeeds could
scarcely be regarded, even by the unreflecting, as omnipotent in the
distribution of the rewards and punishments of the world to come.
Dante therefore gave a considerable impulse to the advance of human
freedom, by causing Christianity to revert in some degree to its
primary form ; and insisting upon justice, well-doing and unselfish-
ness from its chief ministers, who had impiously sought exemption
from these duties in their official authority. The idea thus instilled
into popular conceptions was no doubt gorminative, and capable of
large application to all the duties and relations in which men were
conceived to stand to God.

ii. Nor, in view of the popularity so rapidly attained by the Divina
Commoedia, were Dante's strictures on the unholy pretension of the
Papacy to secular no less than spiritual sovereignty, unimportant.
The opposite theory of a ' Holy Roman Empire ' was, as we know, by
no means new ; but it was one thing to promulgate it in the court of
a Barbarossa, or Louis of Bavaria, or to discuss it in learned treatises
De Monarchia, written for the most part in Latin, but quite another
to enounce it in popular rhymes. Hence such verses as : —

4 Di' oggimai clie la Chiesa di Roma
Per confondere in se duo reggimenti
Cade nel fango, e sc bmtta e la soma, 1 l

were pregnant with implications far in excess of their prima facie
meaning. Those who questioned the one power might proceed
farther than Dante, and might ask themselves why they conceded
the other, and the question would bo the more hazardous since Rome
had authoritatively based her twofold rule on the same indivisible
foundation. So also his invective against- the Church — his designa- \
tion of her as the harlot of the Revelation 2 — would have the greater
effect as emanating from one who regarded himself as a faithful son/
of the true spiritual Church.

iii. A further stimulus to intellectual emancipation must be ad- ]
judged to Dante's stress upon philosophy, or truth, as inherently J
divine. This is the glorious subject of his Convito which has been
described as the ' First work on philosophy written in the Italian
language.' 3 In developing this theme Dante is no doubt on the
track of Christian Fathers and mediaeval thinkers. But it was ad-

1 Purg., Canto xvi. v. 127.

1 Purff. } Canto xxxii.

• Settembrini, Lezioni di Lcttcratura Italiana, i. 159.

104 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

vantageous to rescue the idea from the Latin tomes and dialectic-
^orms of scholasticism, and assert it in popular form and language.
Most important also — though beyond the scope of Dante's vision —
was the promulgation of such teaching at the commencement of the
era of modern science and inquiry, at a time when every new truth,
no matter how demonstrable in itself or to what sphere of know-
ledge it pertained, was liable to be estimated, and either received or
rejected, according to a standard of theological orthodoxy.

iv. That Dante entertained Protestant sympathies, and in this
respect contributed to Free-thought, we have already seen. Tho
precise extent of those sympathies must always remain a matter of
doubt. The question itself has degenerated into a party issue be-
tween tho rival religionists. Unduly exaggerated on the one side, it
is just as unduly depreciated on the other. On this point Dante has
been long destined to endure a dichotomy not dissimilar to that
which he awards to some of the denizens of the Inferno. Romanist*
claim the greater share in his thought and sympathies ; while thin.
claim is contested and interpreted in their own favour by Protestants.
The former lay stress on his expressions of reverence for the Church,
for her ministers, her dogmas and her worship. The latter point to
the doom of ^yil Popes — to his stress on the Bible as the main source
of Christian truth — to his invective against tho greed, lust and ambi-
tion — the parasitical growths of every system of sacerdotalism — to his

I /preference for moral purity, as superior to religious rites. Weighing

[ impartially the two sides we must I think conclude, as we have

* \ already done, that the preponderance is on the side of Protestantism.
No one at least can dispute these three facts : 1. That Dante was
irreconcilably opposed to the Romanism of the thirteenth century.

2. That a Reformed Romanism, such as he would have approved,
would not have varied greatly from some types of Protestantism.*

3. That the general direction of his sympathies was indisputably
towards Freedom, both spiritual and political.

v. An indirect but undoubted effect of the Divina Comma*dia y
especially of the Inferno, was to initiate those reflections on the

1 Dante thus defines the mode in which all truth or philosophy is related
to God. According to him Philosophy is 'amoroso uso di Sapienza, il quale-
massimamente e in Dio, perocche in Lui e somma Sapienza, e sommo Amore, * v
sommo Atto,' Convito, iii. 12 : Ed. Giuliani, p. 281. On the general question,
comp. Giuliani's Excursus. Delia Filosofia del Convito di Dante. Convito, p. 895.
See also Settembrinrs Lezxoni, i. p. 160.

* On this point the author of the article ( Dante ' in ErscJi uml G ruber re-
marks, ' Eine katholische Kirche, nach den Grundsatzen Dante's gebild«*t,
wurde auch der freisinnigste Protestant nichts ohne Ehrfurcht und Anerken-
iuing bctrachten. 1

General Causes and Leaders. 105

physical hell of mediaeval theology which have since operated in
undermining the belief among thoughtful Christians. The Inferno
of Dante has thus ironically contributed to quench the material
flames, and annihilate the physical tortures of the creed which gave
them birth. The horrible realism of Dante's truly infernal pictures —
the ruthless barbarity of his torments — the.fiendish ingenuity, worthy
of a familiar of the Inquisition, that could devise such a variety of
inhuman punishments, the audacity that could resort to ideas of the=
most foul and loathsome description 1 in pursuit of its purpose— how-
ever congenial to the imperfect civilization, the materializing concep-
tions, the brutal passions of mediaeval Italy, were destined to a rapid
transformation in a milder and more humane age. Then the dogma
of a material hell was at its climax of development; and the creations
of the Inferno — overdrawn and over-coloured as we rightly consider
them — were, so far from being coarser, in reality somewhat more
refined than current descriptions of hell — those e.g. which formed the
staple of the discourses of the preaching friars. 2 The ghastly daubs
which still represent, to the lower classes of Italians, their conceptions
of hell are inartistic delineations on canvas of themes and spectacles
which in 11 Inferno are set forth with eloquence of language and a
vivid if grotesque imagination. Its immediate effect on the thought
of the Renaissance is seen in the irony and ridicule to which the
names and ideas of hell and purgatory were subjected by Boccaccio,
Sacchetti, Pulci, Ariosto, and other Italian novelists and poets. The
skeptical recoil from, and disdain of, such brutal exhibitions were not
dissimilar to the reckless contempt and boisterous hilarity with which
a public execution is generally witnessed by the unfeeling crowd.
The details of the Inferno have often been compared with the de- N
scriptions in Milton's Hell; No doubt the extreme particularity and
distinctness of the imagery of the former presents a striking con-
trast to the magnificent vagueness of the latter. It is generally
agreed that the difference is partly owing to inherent dissimilarity in
the structure of the imaginations of Dante and Milton, but I should
also ascribe it, in a great measure, to a progressive sense of the fitness
of modesty and reserve in describing the conditions of the world to
come. Were any poet possessing a genius commensurate with the*
subject to take up once more the theme of E Inferno we should ex-
pect a still further development of vagueness — imagery and accessories

1 Comp. the well-known passage of W. S. Landor's Pentameron, commencing,
' The filth iness of some passages would disgrace the drunkenest horse-dealer, 1
$tc, etc. Works, vol. ii. p. 307.

1 Comp. A. Meray's most interesting work, La Vie an temps des Libre*
Pricfieurs, vol. i. p. 277 etc. Paris, 1878.

io6 T/ie Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

of a more directly supernatural kind — spiritual tortures described in
suitable psychical terms. No other treatment would now be accepted
*is befitting the subject, for the reason that while the doctrine of
future retribution still holds a place in the convictions of most
Christians, the dogma of a material hell can no longer be said to
exist.

yi. Dante's enormous and diversified erudition must also have had
<i wholesome and enlightening effect on an age when human learning
s^was confined to the narrow groove of scholastic theology. With a
knowledge of the schoolmen, and the Aristotelian doctors, whether
Christian or Mahometan, he combined studies of a more distinctly
modern cast. In his youth, we are told, he cultivated music and
drawing, as well as poetry. So far as he could, he investigated
natural science; as numerous passages of the Divina Commoedia
serve to prove. His work Dc Volgari Eloquio shows a profound
acquaintance with the various Italian and Provencal dialects of the
thirteenth century; and reveals considerable philological capacity.
He was not, any more than Petrarca, sufficiently acquainted with
Greek to read Homer in the original ; but some knowledge of the
language he almost certainly possessed. He had also studied, like
most of the Free-thinkers of the Renaissance, the Jewish Cabbala,
and, as his Vita Nuova proves, was by no means devoid of the mysti-
cism with which that study is allied. Add to these varied intellec-
tual activities his political and historical studies, and we perceive
that Dante was one of those omnivorous, omnipetent or all-seeking
intellects whose capacities are limited not by their own defective
Amplitude so much as by the external bounds and conditions in-
cidental to their working — one of those rare minds for which human
knowledge is too little, and human life much too short.

vii. Besides the effects of Dante's writings we must, lastly, not

omit to notice the impression wrought by his gigantic personality on

the age in which he lived. The perfection of individual development

may be likened to a gradual self-sculptured elevation through grada- .

tions of basso and alto-relievo, until the man — a completed statue —

stands forth completely detached from the rude matrix in which

he was embedded. This separate personality forms the common

/^characteristic of all the leaders of the Renaissance. Mental and

I spiritual independence is the connecting link which joins together

\ Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Pulci, Macchiavelli, Guicciardini and

\Pomponazzi. This was the quality by which they opposed, and

gradually stood aloof from, medievalism. They thus protested

against the sacrifice of humanity, in its noblest representatives, to

the supposed interests of effete systems in philosophy, religion and

General Causes and Leaders. 107

politics. Dante was accustomed to boast that he was his own party; 1
and few boasts could claim fuller justification. His adhesion, such
as it was, to mediaeval Christianity and philosophy, was the deliberate
reasoned conviction of the man himself. His dogma was in reality
his own sole creation — his freedom, the space his own personal needs
had devised. Even if those who lived in the contemplation of his
magnificent isolation did not care either to share his dogma or remain
content with his freedom, his own example, his sturdy self-assertion,
might well animate them so to regulate their own convictions as to
secure a still greater measure of religious and philosophical liberty.

p t Petrarca, however, not Dante, is the great representa- \

tive of Italian humanism. If Dante is the prophet of the J
movement, combining the fearlessness and austerity of an Elijah with
the eloquence and sublimity of an Isaiah, Petrarca is its first apostle —
tender, passionate and profound like St. John. If the former foresees
and heralds the new r dawn, the latter basks and rejoices in its early
sunshine. The different qualifications of the men, no less than their
difference of environment, were admirably adapted to the parts they
were respectively called to play in the regenerative movement of
Europe. Dante was the thunder-peal that boded a breaking up of
the long period of mediaeval drought and barrenness — Petrarca w r as
the rain that actually brought relief. While Dante's intellect was
more gigantic and imposing, Petrarca's was more plastic, susceptible /
and expansive. While Dante's imagination was more powerful and
intense, Petrarca's was more sympathetic and many-sided. Dante's
learning, like his mind, was marked by inassiveness, not devoid of
pedantry or of a certain Cyclopsean grotesqueness of outline.
Petrarca's was characterized by elegance, polish and refinement, with
the addition of an appropriate vagueness of definition. In thfcir writ-
ings, the one moves us like a Colossus, with his enormous dimensions
and superhuman majesty, the other affects us like a shapely statue
of Apollo, with his graceful form and exquisite proportions. Dante,
moreover, was a dogmatist who clung tenaciously to beliefs and
superstitions of the dark ages; while Petrarca was a child of the new
world, full of its fresher aspirations, and prepared to substitute culture
and a tender nature-w r orship for much of what was then current as
Christianity. Dante's mind had most of the qualities of an Ecclesi- \
astic — an austere St. Dominic, for instance — Petrarca was a* genuine )
philosopher and freethinker. The former venerated as his classical

1 c Parte per se stesso.' Par., Canto, xvii. The phras3 is not to be limited
as it is by some writers (Comp. Bouterarek, Gesch. der Poesie, i. p. 80) to his
political pes it ion.

108 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

model the conservative Virgil, the latter took for his guiding genius
the eclectic and Academic skeptic, Cicero.

Of late years Petrarca has received renewed attention at the hands
of his fellow-countrymen, thanks to the celebration of his fifth cen-
tenary in 1874, as well as to the general revival of interest in her
mediaeval thinkers which marks the literature of Italy in the present*
day. The result has been to enlarge our knowledge respecting him,
and to increase his reputation as a thinker and philosopher.

Born in 1304 — seventeen years before the death of Dante —
Petrarca's youth is distinguished by the precocious development of
his powers and his enthusiasm for classical studies. His father
wished to bring him up to his own profession of the law ; but his
designs were frustrated by the zest with which his son devoured the
poets and philosophers of antiquity. At an early age he was sent to
the University of Montpellier, where he remained four years. From
thence he went to Bologna to complete his studies in jurisprudence.
Altogether seven j-ears were thus employed in his legal education —
years which he afterwards said were ' altogether lost, not spent.'
He contrived, however, at both universities, to snatch some precious
moments from his irksome studies to devote to Cicero and the Latin
Poets. His father, despairing of his success in his profession so long
as his mind was so fully concentrated on anciont literature, once
threw a number of his classical books into the fire; but was so
touched by his cries and entreaties that he snatched a few of them
from the flames and restored them to the weeping youth. The death
of his father, when he was twentj'-two years of age, left him at
liberty to pursue what was clearly the calling of his life. He re-
turned to Avignon; where, finding that the paternal property did not
suffice for a livelihood, he received the tonsure, and thus becamo
eligible for ecclesiastical preferment, though he never took orders.

Devoting himself to literature and poetry, Petrarca soon began to
acquire renown. This was largely facilitated by the residence, at
that time, of the Papal Court at Avignon, and the intercourse thereby
afforded with so many distinguished persons, who crowded to it from
every country in Europe. The interchange of thought with men of
so many different opinions and sympathies served the double purpose
of enlarging the range of his intellect and imagination, and of con-
firming the free direction of his studies, so happily begun by the
thoughtful perusal of Cicero. Hence, although Petrarca treats every-
thing belonging to Avignon with the greatest contumely and disdain r
there is no doubt that he was largely indebted to the mental excita-

1 Comp. Mezieres, Pttrarque, p. 7.

General Causes and Leaders. 109

tion it served to create, for the formation of the enlightened views
and liberal sympathies which afterwards distinguished him. Not^
the least of these awakening agencies was the insight his residence
at Avignon afforded into the corruption of the Romish Church; while
from its geographical position the city still cherished fond remini-
scences of the Troubadours and Prove^al poetry, and thus possessed ■
affinities with the chief popular literature of the time. His own '
sonnets are, to a great extent, polished echoes and reproductions of
the old poems of chivalry ; and so far he may be called a successor
of the Trouveres and Troubadours. 1

But Petrarca did not draw all his literary impulses from Avignon.
He traversed Italy, France and Spain in search of MSS. of the
classics, as well as employed all his friends in the same work. Many
MSS. he transcribed with his own hand ; and his industry in the
acquisition of these treasures was second only to the prodigious
activity of Poggio Bracciolini. His zeal was rewarded with merited
success. He was enabled to form a goodly collection of classical
works ; and his eager quest brought him into contact with all the
illustrious students and patrons of the new learning of his time.

Petr area's training and pursuits admirably qualified him for the
position he has so long held as the chief Humanist of the Renais-
sance. His distinguishing merit, and his principal contribution to\
Italian Free-thought, consists in his separation from, and hostility to,!!
scholasticism. He is clear-sighted enough to discern, and sufficiently*
enlightened to welcome, the new intellectual and spiritual light
dawning over Europe. To him medievalism is, without qualifica-
tion — ' the dark ages.' He is hostile to it both as an intellectual and
as a religious system. He detests its ignorance, its pedantry, its
dogma, its tyranny and its superstition. The commencement of this )
free aspiration we must assign to his study of Cicero ; who seems to /
have produced the same quickening influence on his mind as he did
on that of Augustine. Burckhardt has well observed the effect of
Cicero's popularity during the Renaissance as an eclectic and par- -
tially skeptical thinker. This influence he shares with the Platonic
dialogues a little later on ; so that Cicero and Sokrates may be called
the chief connecting links that joined the skepticism of ancient
Oreece and Rome with its revival in modern Europe. In the case of
Petrarca, his artistic sympathies seem to have been first attracted by
€icero's style, before his understanding was captivated by his philo-

1 Petrarca 1 ** indebtedness to the Troubadours for qualities of style, metre
And exaggerated sentiment is now generally admitted. The latest and fullest
treatment of this subject is Prof. A. BaVtoli's chapter, ' II Petrarca e I Tro va-
lor i ' in his J Primi due Secoli delta Letteratura Italiana, p. 588.

1 10 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

sophy. When he grew able to appreciate the latter, he discovered a
range of thought and a freedom of treatment which served him in
good stead in his attack on mediaeval philosophy.

Scholasticism was a method and a system. Professing to be based
on dialectical processes, it nullified its profession by the arbitrary
assumption of numberless first principles which it regarded as in-
fallible. Thus the dialectic form, which was an advantage to tho
strong and independent thinker, as supplying a method and stand-
point in human reason which he would use without restriction, was
a snare to the weaker mind, as it presumed on an infallible basis of
logic which in reality had no existence. Tho freer aspects of scho-
lasticism, by means of its stress on logic, we have already investi-
gated. Petrarca was unable to perceive that it had any. Tho
massive tomes of tho school philosophy were to him a heap of chaff
in which he could not find a single grain of truth or freedom. Tho
universities whero they wero taught — in other words all in Europe —
were disseminators of ignorance and dungeons of Free-thought. Ho
reproaches the scholastic teachers, as Plato did the Sophists, with
prostituting their talents. 1 Like cunning hierophants they affected a
mystery and profundity which was, very largely, only the creation of
thoir own interested selfishness. Dialectic, the basis of scholasticism,
seems to him a puerile employment, utterly useless in the ordinary
concerns of life. The only utility any thinking man would ascribe to
it is as a kind of mental gymnastic. As such it may be useful for
children, but an old sj'llogism-monger is ridiculous. Furthermore,
dialectic can only bo a means, it can never bo the sole end, of intel-
lectual effort, which it is the object of scholasticism to make it. Tho
( aim of scholasticism is to render its disciples able disputants, not to
V teach them real knowledge. Hence ho ridicules the rewards which
attach to these controversialists; the degrees, e.g. of Doctor and
Master, which by pompous insignia and empty ceremony transform a
man from a blockhead to a full-blown philosopher.* He describes the
coremony of degree-conferring, or rather the exercise attending it, in

1 Comp. Voigt, Wiederbdebung des classischen Alterthmns^ p. 38.

* This was a frequent subject of satirical invective with the satirists of tho
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Barclay, e.g. in his Shyppe of Fades, ridi-
cules those who

4 Lesynge theyr tyme at the unyversyte
Yet count they themselfe of great auctoryte
With theyr proude nodes on theyr neckes hangynge,
They haue the lawde ; but other haue the cunnyngc\

They thynke that they have all scyence perfytely
"Within theyr hertes bostynge them of the same,

General Causes and Leaders. 1 1 1

the following amusing terms : — ' The silly youth arrives at the halL
His teachers announce and celebrate him. Neighbours and friends-
praise him. When bidden he mounts the rostrum, looking down on
all things from thence as from a great height, and murmuring I know
not what confused matter. Whereupon his elders, vying with each
other, exalt him to heaven as if he had spoken divine things. Mean-
while bells ring and trumpets blare. Kisses are bestowed on him.
The round cap is placed on his head, the black gown on his back.
When these ceremonies are completed, he comes down a wise man*
who went up a fool — truly a marvellous metamorphosis — though
unknown to Ovid.' l

But scholasticism is not only hurtful as teaching and rewarding
disputation and fostering the pride of ignorance. The system itself
is narrow. Petrarca's conception of culture is indeed as broad and \
inclusive as was the knowledge of his time. The wise man for him /
is not the school theologian, but the student of history, the philo-
sopher, the poet, the theologian — all embodied in the same person-
ality. Every faculty of man should be cultivated, every science N
acquired ; but the attitude of men towards knowledge ought not to )
be that of finders but of seekers, not of professors but of humble /
disciples. 2 There is but one universal science worthy the pursuit of
all men — viz. t ruth an d.irirtue. 3 For the purposes of this dual
object, he reproaches the sciences of his time with being useless ; just
as Agrippa, two centuries after, accuses all sciences of being false.
There is indeed a slight soupcon of narrowness in the extreme utili-
tarianism which he makes the end of every science. The philo-
sophers, he says, search for the origin of all things, and know not that
God is their Creator. They describe the virtues, but do not practise
them. The theologians are transformed into logicians, if not to
Sophists. They will not be loving children, but knowers of God.
1 These men/ he says in another place, ' dispute about the secrets of
Nature, just as if they had come down from heaven and shared the
counsel of the Omnipotent, forgetting what is written, " Who hath
known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor." ' *

In his perpetual reproach of scholasticism as busying itself with

Though they therto theyr mynde dyd neuer aply ;
Without the thynge, they joy them of the name. 1

Of unprofytalle stod*;.

1 Op. om., Basle (1581), torn, i., p. 10. Comp. Muzieres, Petrarque p. 8(31.
Voigt, Wiederhelebung, p. 38.

* Voigt, Op. cit., p. 30.

* Epiftda rer. Sen., xii. 2.

4 Comp. F. Fiorentino, Scritti Varii, p. 100, etc.

1 1 2 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

f -questions quite apart from the ordinary interests of humanity,
^ Petrarca no doubt hit on its main defect, now becoming more and
more palpable to the Free-thinkers of the Renaissance. What
possible connexion they asked could exist between the disputes on
Realism and Nominalism, or the controversies that divided Scotists
and Thomists, and the common needs and facts of man's daily life.
What relation did they bear to the cause of * Truth and virtue.'
Not only were they useless ; they were mischievous and perverting,
inasmuch as the energy devoted to the solution of inscrutable
Tiddles and the interpretation of incomprehensible dogmas, might
have been devoted to objects that came nearer to useful knowledge
•and bore more directly on morality. As it was, the intellects of
the best men of the age were frittered away and wasted in pur-
suits far removed from the domain of human life and action.
Mediaevalism stood like a gigantic primaeval temple raised by
Cyclopasan hands, and possessing the attributes of a bygone age;
but utterly out of harmony with the smaller and more useful erec-
tions which were beginning to .rise around it on every side.
/ Petrarca, to his imperishable fame, called attention to the incon-
\ gruity ; nay more, he commenced the undermining operations necessary
\ to its overthrow.

Petrarca, however, was not content with attacking scholasticism as
a general system. "He boldly came to particular names and author-
ities. Half of the success of his attack is due to this fact. He knew
the superstitious reverence of the latter half of the middle ages for
Aristotle. In Petrarca's time* much of this reverence was transferred
to Averroes, his great expounder : l che '1 gran comento feo,' as Dante
labels him. These two idols of the schools in his time Petrarca at-
tacked at first with caution, but afterwards with fearlessness and
unreserve. He is therefore a predecessor of Pomponazzi ; though his
standpoint is that of a general free-thinker, while Pomponazzi is a
philosophical skeptic. He dared to say that after all Aristotle was
only a man, and did not know everything — a proposition which, how-
ever reasonable to us, has been rightly characterized by Professor
M6zieres as * une parole memorable, la plus bardie peut-etre qu'ait
entendue le moyen age.' 1 The mere breath of suspicion against the
infallibility of the Stagirite was at that time a dictum of heterodoxy
equivalent to, if not exceeding, the open denial of a fundamental article
f of the Christian faith. To Aristotle Petrarca opposed, as an authority,
I Plato; but for no other reason than the high fame he had always
maintained in the Christian Church. The relative merits of Aristotle

1 PArarque, p. 362.

General Causes and Leaders. 113

and Plato were not presented to the Italian mind in a definite form )
until the next century.

We thus perceive that Petrarca adopted against the gigantic fabric
of mediaeval dogma — the centre of intellectual and spiritual authority
of his age — a position of free and independent criticism, which goes
far to justify the title bestowed on him of ' the father of modern
criticism. ,1 The very restlessness of his intellect, and the compre-
hensiveness of its range, make criticism and dissidence the natural
discharge of its functional activity. Not only did he analyse,
question, and dissent from writers and authorities with whom he had
little sympathy, but he subjected his own intimate favourites, Virgil
and Cicero, to the same treatment. 8 The only basis of such fearless
independence, and its sole outcome, is a protest against all authority
ab extra, no matter from what source emanating, or to what prescrip-
tive rights appealing. Petrarca declares — a momentous declaration A
at that time — the inalienable right of the individual reason to j
examine, test and determine the nature and quality of every truth /
presenting itself for adoption. In other words he is a free-thinker ;
and to a considerable extent a skeptic. That this was really Petrar-
ca 's position we shall see more fully further on.

But Petrarca's quarrel was not only with mediaeval philosophy ; it
also included mediaeval Christianity.. They were indeed indivisible,
for scholasticism was merely the literary and philosophical form
mediaeval religion had assumed. His early life at Avignon disclosed
to him the corruption of the Papal Court then in residence there, and
he records his experience in vivid and imperishable characters, both
in his Latin and Italian Poems. 8 This first impression was more
than confirmed by what he saw of Romanism in his travels, and by
his later acquaintance with it at Rome. The capital of Western
Christendom he addresses in tones which recal the denunciations of
a Hebrew Prophet, or the writer of the Apocalypse. In two of his
sonnets 4 he apostrophises it as ' The Greedy Babylon ': —

( Fon tana di dolore, albergo d' ira,
Scola d* errori, e tempio d* eresia.'

This description of Rome as the ' School of errors and the temple of
heresy,' incidentally throws, I may observe, a curious but not insigni-

1 Mezieres, Op. cit., p. 862.

* Mezi&res, Pitrarque, p. 871. Comp. Dr. Koerting's Petrarca?* Leben und
Wertey p. 511.

* See Eclogues vi. and vii. Op., Basle, voL iii. pp. 14 and 15 : and the 14th
of his Miscellaneous Sonnets.

* Rime Ed. Padova, iL pp. 278, 274.

VOL. I. I

ii4 ^* Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

ficant light on Petrarca's estimate of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. His
literary fame also served to bring him into contact with leading
ecclesiastics, whom he found, as a class, devoted to luxury, idleness,
and ambition, not to godliness and sound learning. The lower
orders of clergy added to debauchery, and grosser forms of vice, an
ignorance and superstition almost surpassing belief. Petrarca's
refined manners and learned tastes recoiled from men whose occupa-
tions, ideas and sympathies were so utterly opposed to his own. His
studies of the early Christian Fathers, especially Lactantius and
Augustine, soon disclosed the difference between the Papal Chris-
tianity of the fourteenth century, and the purity of the primitive
Church, cradled in poverty : —

' Fondata in casta ed umil povertate.'

Like Dante and other humanists, he finds in Constantino's donation,
that ' fatal marriage-dower/ * the source of most of its after ambition
and corruption. In this clear recognition of wealth and inordinate
power as disastrous to the true objects of Christianity, Petrarca
partook of those views which afterwards found their climax in the
Reformation. But he was also impelled in the same direction by his
( Monarchical ' sympathies, and his faith in the universal sovereignty
of the Holy Roman Empire. By aiming at secular power, the Papacy
had encroached on a jurisdiction as divine as that of its own spiritual
authority. Added to these feelings, as partly suggesting, partly cor-
roborating them, was the modification of Romanist Christianity, pro-
duced by his classical studies. Cicero and Virgil were not only
superior to the Church Fathers in Latinity, in learning, in intel-
lectual sympathy, in general culture, but they were also superior to
most of them in religion and morality. That Cicero, e.g. was not a
Christian, so far as formal profession and outward worship were con-
cerned, could not be denied. But Petrarca, with Boccaccio and other
humanists, had attained a somewhat loftier standpoint than that
which estimated a man's faith by external adherence to specific creeds
and dogmas. Regarding his spirit, the general tone of his writings,
and his professedly high moral principle, 8 Petrarca pronounced
Cicero a virtual Christian ; a man of instincts and tendencies so
allied to Christianity that he must infallibly have been a Christian
had he come in contact with the teachings of Christ. Nor was
Cicero the only writer of antiquity for whom Petrarca's broad culture

1 Comp. Dante, Inferno, Canto xix.

* Burckhardt has pointed out that with all his enthusiasm for Cicero,
Petrarca was fully alive to the imperfections of his character both as a man
and as a statesman. Cultur d. Renainance, vol. i. p. 294 and Note.

General Causes and Leaders. 1 1 5

and liberal sympathies were concerned. He displays almost equal
interest in Virgil (Plato, whom he read in Latin), Seneca, Lucan,
Ovid ; in a word for all poets and prose writers whose Latinity and
morals were in his opinion irreproachable. Had Petrarca planned,
like his great predecessor, a Divina Commedia, the occupants of
the Inferno and Paradiso would undoubtedly have been compelled
to change places. Cicero and Virgil, Sokrates and Plato, would
have been assigned to the higher regions of the Paradiso, instead of
monkish obscurantists like Dominic and Damianus. Petrarca, how- \
ever, did not oppose the dogmas of Christianity. He had not the^
slightest desire to enact the role of a reformer, either within or
without the Church. When, therefore, by going hack to Christian
antiquity and the apostolic age he was able to tone down the exces-
sive pretensions of Romanism to a measure more in harmony with
his judgment, he was content to accept the result as the true
Christianity of his allegiance, and to ignore the dogmatic extrava-
gances of its Papal development. Nevertheless he. was not prepared
to sanction the open ridicule which the disciples of Averroes some-
times levelled at Christianity, and at its great doctors, Paul and ^
Augustine. He resolutely defended his religion from these narrow- ^
minded dogmatists, and an anecdote is recorded of his forcible ejec- j
tion of one of them from his house. Vogt l rightly remarks on this
that Petrarca's defence of Christianity from Averroists is not in the
interest of ecclesiastical Christianity but of his own. 3 This is true ;
but his feeling to Averroes is not only a question of religion, it is \
also one of general culture. Averroism represented to him a blind,
pedantic, self-conceited philosophy, to which he opposes Christianity 1
as a system based on humility and conscious ignorance, and as a J
cultus which placed ethical practice above speculation. On this
point Petrarca shares largely the same skeptical aspect of the
Christian faith which impressed itself on other Christian skeptics,
such as Huet, Le Vayer, and Pascal — I mean its insistence on
humility and self-distrust, aud its opposition to intellectual and
spiritual pride. Petrarca's relation to the dogmas of the Church,
and conversely their mode of presentation to his intellect, is instinc-
tively shown by his proofs of immortality. The grounds he assigns
for believing it are not drawn from the Bible, or from the creeds of
the Church, or from the testimonies of Christian writers, but exclu-

1 Comp. Vogt, Op. cit., p. 58. This incident is naturally made much of by
writers anxious to prove Petrarca's complete orthodoxy. Cf. t^j % Caesar Cantu,
Oli eretiei d? Italia, vol. i. p. 176.

* Vogt., Op. cit., p. 57.

1 1 6 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

sively from classical authors. He relies especially on the * Scipio's
Dream ' of Cicero, and other scattered intimations collected from his
writings ; and also adduces the Phcedo of Plato. 1 This was no doubt
the point of view from which he contemplated all Christian truths.
He saw them through the medium of classical learning, and valued
them in proportion as their presentation by the Church harmonized
with that medium. A dogma so exclusively Christian as to have no
similarity or connexion, direct or indirect, with heathen thought, he
would have estimated at a very low price. Thus, without any formal
development, perhaps with only a partial realization of the outcome
of his own thoughts and aspirations, Petrarca regarded Christianity,
or in point of fact, Religion, as essentially culture. As his latest
biographer remarks, he was first a Pagan philosopher, only secondly
a Christian. 2 Whatever be the inherent defects of this conception,
especially as interpreted by disciples of Petrarca and other still more
extreme humanists, 8 it cannot be said that it was either unjustifiable
or untimely. When the Papacy had developed a Christianity from
which liberal culture had been completely eliminated, it was not very
wonderful that Humanism should propagate a culture in which
Christianity was somewhat in danger of being lost. Petrarca, not-
withstanding classical predilections, was not likely to forget religion
as an essential part of the highest culture. But his Church was
/ much more Catholic than that of Rome. His generous sympathies
■comprehended in the bounds of one indivisible community all men
who appealed to his sense of intellectual and moral worth. So far
from orthodoxy, in the ecclesiastical sense of the term, being an im-
portant, still less an exclusive title to human reverence, he would not
have exchanged a page of Cicero for all the ecclesiastical writers he
knew, with the exception perhaps of Augustine. Nor, with his strong
feeling for truth as apart from doctrines and creeds, was he able to
perceive the distinction between the inspiration claimed by sacred
writers and Church councils, and the unclaimed afflatus of ancient
heathen moralists. To him Cicero was as inspired as Augustine,
and Seneca was on the same level with St. Paul, when uttering the
self-same truths. Hence, in most of his works, heathen authors are
quoted side by side with the foremost names in Christian literature,
without the slightest perception of any difference existing either in
the religious or literary status of the various authorities. This
eclecticism we shall often have occasion to notice as a characteristic

1 Com p. Burckhardt, Cultur cL Renaissance, iL p. 817.

* Dr. Koerting, Op. cit., p. 502.

• Comp., Voigt, Op. cit., p. 58.

General Causes and Leaders. 1 1 7

of our free-thinkers. Its ripest and most unreserved exponent is
found among French Skeptics — viz. Bishop Huet of Avranches.

Fetrarca's skeptical attitude to the beliefs of his time is not con-
fined to Philosophy and Religion. Here his battle had been with the
universities and the Church — in other words, with the highest specu-
lation, and the most accredited erudition, of the age. But he extends
the same critical incisive method to popular beliefs in their most
seductive form of superstitions. He opposes the generally current
and deeply rooted faith of the time in the supernatural, as manifested
by astrology, alchymy, miracles, daemoniac possession, prodigies,
auguries, dreams, presentiments. It is easy to conceive that this
direction of his skepticism, though more obvious and natural to us,
may have been far more difficult and dangerous to Fetrarca; and
involved therefore more courage on his part, than his attacks on
philosophy and theology. The supposed dangerous effect of Free-
thought is not always tested by the inherent worth or dignity of the
particular doctrine held to be impugned. Superstitions relating to
material objects lie nearer to the affections of the vulgar than
abstract beliefs ; and their faith, such as it is, is more undermined
by the attempted removal of the former than by open denial of the
latter. To the Neapolitan peasant the blood of Januarius is a
closer and more venerated object of faith than Deity, and he would
be more profoundly affected by its non-liquefaction than by the most
triumphant and convincing demonstration of atheism. And, coming
nearer home, thousands of Christians having some claim to be called
civilized, regard with more reverence the supposed bodily presence of
Christ in the Eucharist than His spiritual life in humanity or history.
Fetrarca, in opposing the superstitions, was really attacking the \,
science of his time. Astrologers were then held in the highest repute.
They were courted by kings and princes, they occupied the chairs
and received the endowments of learned universities. Though re-
garded by the Church with an eye of suspicion, as rival hierophants
and aspirants for fame and wealth, there were too many points of
connexion between their science and mediaeval Christianity to permit
the latter openly to oppose them. Nor, by suggesting the agency
of daemons to account for the supposed success of diviners and
astrologers, could the Church be said to further the cause of enlight-
enment, unless on the principle of the Italian proverb that ' the
greater devil always casts out the less.' Against these superstitions,
allied with so many powerful interests, Fetrarca pleads with spirit
and boldness. He points out that knowledge of the future is impos-
sible, and if possible would be embarrassing. He reiterates Cicero's
sarcasm, that a generally truthful man for a single falsehood is re-

/

1 1 8 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

puted a liar, while an astrologer, though an habitual liar, is for a
single chance coincidence reckoned a prophet. 1

In his contest with superstitions Petrarca is not supported, as in
his warfare with mediaeval philosophy, by the unanimous consensus
of antiquity. No doubt his favourites, Cicero and Augustine, are on
his side as against astrologers ; but on the other hand many of the
Latin writers whom he valued were opposed to him on this and
kindred subjects. Livy, e.g. was quite a repository of marvellous
prodigies, which however Petrarca declined to accept on his authority.
The same principle of enlightened rationalism Petrarca applies to
dreams and presentiments. That dreams are occasionally fulfilled is
just as little wonderful, and for the same reason, as that a diviner's
prediction happens to turn out correct. As a crowning proof of the
worthlessness of stellar vaticination, he instances the example of a
court astrologer of Milan, who in an argument with Petrarca fully
assented to his skepticism on the subject, but pleaded the necessity
of his art as a means of getting a livelihood. 2

The boundary line between astrology and medicine, in the four-
teenth century, was not broad. As a rule the disciple of JEsculapius
also cast nativities ; and his crucibles and vessels for compounding
chemicals were further employed for purposes of alchymy. Accord-
ing to Petrarca both were different branches of a common charla-
tanism. With medicine indeed his feud is of a peculiarly violent
character. He wrote to Pope Clement VI. when he was ill, bidding
him beware of his doctors. The Pope's medical attendant, not
relishing the intrusion of a layman into the sacred precincts of his
profession, wrote a bitter Epistle to Petrarca, who replied in Four
Books of In Medicum quendam Invectivarum, of the tone of which
Tiraboschi satirically remarks, 3 that 'he cannot propound it as a
model of philosophical moderation.' Many reasons may be assigned
rfor Petrarca's animosity on this subject. Medicine and anatomy, like
J all other branches of natural science, were then in the hands of the
\ Arabs, and Petrarca had no higher opinion of the physical science
I than he had of the metaphysics of the co-religionaries of Averroes
. and Avicenna. His prejudice in this matter was not however justified
by the sound judgment which directed his hostility to astrology ; for
in Medicine, as in other cognate subjects, Arab learning was far in

1 Comp. Ep. rer.fam., iii., Ep. 8. Opera (Basle), ii. p. 611. See also Tiraboschi,
Staria, etc., vol. v. pt. i. p. 861.

* Comp. De Remed. Utri. Fort., lib. I., Dial. 112. Senil., lib. I., Ep. 6, and
particularly his letter to Boccaccio, Senil. III. Ep. 1, Opera, ii., p. 768.

a Storia, etc., vol. v. pt. i. p. 862. For the treatise itself see the Latin works
(Ed. Basle), p. 1081.

General Causes and Leaders. 119

advance of that of Christian Europe. 1 But the extent of his pre-
judice is strikingly shown by the fact of his excepting Greek and
Roman medicine from his classical sympathies. Of the curative
methods of Hippokrates, he pleaded, men were ignorant, and in Galen
he placed no faith ; and even if the doctors of medicine in the
fourteenth century knew the methods of Hippokrates, the knowledge
would not have availed them, for the Greek physician practised in
another land and on men of a different race. . . .

Another reason of Petrarca's animosity against medicine was its
methods. Frequently these were based upon irrational dogmas and
subjective fancies. Its professors, though really empirics, assumed a
superciliousness of manner and an infallibility of self-assertion
against which our free-thinker recalcitrated. In an amusing letter
to Boccaccio * he ridicules the vanity and solemn pomposity of the
medical men of his time — their purple robes, their rings studded
with precious stones, their gilt spurs and other costly gear. He
sarcastically says, that they only wanted a little of a rightful claim
to the honour of a triumph like a Roman conqueror, for probably
there were few among them who could boast of having slain five
thousand men ; but what they wanted in number they compensated
by the quality of the slaughtered; for they slew not enemies but
fellow-citizens, and civilians, not soldiers cased in armour. We
find Petrarca's prejudice against the medical profession expressed
in similar invectives, by Cornelius Agrippa and Montaigne ; and the
same feeling is shared by most of our free-thinkers down to the time
of Moli&re. Probably there was quite enough dogmatic arrogance,
combined with a real ignorance of their calling, to justify much of
this feeling. As Petrarca distrusted medicine, he took care to avoid
it. Like Moli&re, he attributed his generally vigorous health to direct
opposition to the prescriptions and rules of the faculty. He records
various ludicrous instances of medical fallibility, one of which hap-
pened in his own case. Being at one time ill, his medical attendant
professed to find his illness severe, and ventured on the unfavourable
prognosis that he would die about midnight. Petrarca gleefully
describes the disgust of the worthy medicus, when, paying his
moribund patient a visit next morning, he found him seated comfort-
ably, and hard at work, at his writing-desk.

To jurisprudence, as another branch of mediaeval learning, Petrarca
was unfavourably inclined. The peculiar tone of irritation in which

1 On this subject of the contribution of the Arabs to the science of medicine,
camp. Sedillot, Histoire QinircUe des Arabes, vol. ii. p. 72, etc., and the exhaustive
work of Dr. L. Leclerc, Histoire de la Midecine Arabe, 2 vols. Paris, 1876.

* Senil., lib. v. Ep. 4. Gomp. Tiraboschi, v. pt. i. p. 863.

1 20 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

he refers to the subject seems to prove that he never forgot those
painful studies at Montpellier and Bologna, when he was compelled
to put aside Cicero and Virgil for Justinian and the Decretals. But
his animadversions against legal studies are really aimed not so
much against themselves, considered from a philosophical point of
view, as against their misuse by unscrupulous practitioners and
pedantic professors* His own ideas of jurisprudence were derived
from the ancient philosophers ; and certainly were more in harmony
with his high estimate of individual freedom than the heterogeneous
and complex codes generally in force in Italy.

The common centre in which these various propulsions and repul-
sions converge is clear. They mark the humanist, the independent
free-thinker, whose instincts and efforts are radically opposed to the
imaginary erudition and real restrictions of his age. They constitute
the intellectual aspects of that general affinity for freedom, which he
manifested, politically, in his regard for Eienzi, and his approbation
of his ill-fated enterprises. At the same time, if we possessed nothing
more than the indirect evidence of these various tendencies, the
precise determination of Petrarca's skepticism would have been
difficult. The very completeness of natures like his renders a
simple straightforward estimate of their intellectual conclusions
impossible. Not only his intelleot, keen, eager, and comprehensive,
but his sentiment and imagination, tender, susceptible and profound,
had to be consulted in his determination of truth. The conflict
between these rival tendencies is often perceptible in his works.
What the skeptical reason abstracts is returned again in the feeling ;
and on the other hand the definition which is lost in the vague tender-
ness of emotion is replaced by shrewd, clear intellectualism. Bat the
issue of the conflict — the nature of his skeptical conclusions — is not
doubtful in Petrarca's case. We are not left to the hazard of
indirect evidence. In more than one passage of his works, he admits,
accounts for, and defends his skeptical position. Here, e.g. is a
remarkable passage from his letters. ( I am not a frequenter of the
schools, but of the woods ; a solitary wanderer, careless of sects but
greedy of truth. Distrustful of my own faculties, lest I should be
involved in errors, I embrace doubt itself as truth. I have thus
gradually become an Academic ; to myself ascribing nothing, affirm-
ing nothing, and doubting all things excepting those in which doubt
is sacrilege. 1 1 A fuller confession of unfaith we could scarcely

1 'Non scholasticus quidem sum; sed silvicola, soli vagus . . . sectarum
negligent, veri appetens. . . . Seepe diffidens mei ne erroribus implicer,
dubitationem ipeam pro veri tate amplecton Ita sensim Academicus evaei, nil

General Causes and Leaders. 121

expect from a man of Petrarca's sentiments, philosophical and
religions. His donbt is explicit and comprehensive. His adoption
of suspense, for truth, assimilates him to the most pronounced Greek
skeptics. Even the exception of the last clause loses much of its
weight when we remember the nature of his Christianity. The
sacrilege he feared was a violation of his own conscience, not of
ecclesiastical orthodoxy. We must not, however, attribute to Petrarca
a preference for doubt, or suspense, considered as an end in itself,
except when the principle of activity or energy is left in it, and it
becomes, as in the case of Sokrates and others, a stimulus to inquiry. 1
In other cases he regards it not from an absolute but from a relative
point of view. Ignorance was his armour against the omniscience of
scholasticism and the dogmatism of the Church, just as it was that of
Sokrates from the sciolists and obscurantists of Athens. ( In many
things, 7 says Petrarca, speaking of the vaunted wisdom of the schools,
( Ignorance is the highest knowledge — the commencement of all
science.' We have already noticed how even the secular science of
his time was tainted with the assumed infallibility derived from
association with the Church. How Popes and priests, schoolmen and
professors, magicians and diviners, astrologists and alchymists vied
with each other in the assumption of universal and indisputable know-
ledge. With his wider insight and profounder studies, this arrogance
irritated Petrarca. His encomium of ignorance, as opposed to this
proud science, is contained in his work, Of his own Ignorance and
that of many others, one of the most noteworthy of his writings.
This work was occasioned by the following incident. Petrarca has
been criticised by a jury of friends. After an impartial investigation,
they concede to him certain advantages, great renown, influential
patrons, and other blessings of various kinds, but their final verdict
is that ' Though a good man, he is very ignorant.' * Petrarca accepts
the judgment in good part. Sokrates himself could hardly have been
more pleased when the Delphic oracle commended his nescience.
Nevertheless Petrarca takes occasion to examine the pretended know-
ledge, not only of his judges, but of other dogmatists as well. The
result is a conviction that his own ignorance, which he admits to be
profound, is largely shared by his fellow men. His superiority to
others is Sokratic, and consists in the recognition of a truth to which
they are blind. Besides, the verdict of his friends is further correct,
for it describes the aim of his whole life, which is to be virtuous

mihi tribuens, nil affirmans, dubitansque de singulis nisi de quibus dubitaro
sacrilegium reor.' — Ep. Rerum SeniL, I., Ep. 5, Op., torn. ii. p. 745.

1 Comp. De Kerned: Utri. Fort., I., Dial 12, Op. 1, p. 9.

f Scilicet me sine Uteris virum bonum. — Op., vol. ii. p. 1089.

122 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

rather than wise. 1 And here we touch upon another of those prin-
ciples of Petrarca's character which engendered, and which he
employs to compensate for, his advocacy of Free-thought. Besides
recognizing search for wisdom as noble in itself, he points out
the superiority of action to speculation, of virtue to learning. What-
ever may be said of this theme, when examined closely by his own
life and predilections, few subjects in his works are treated more
effusively. No doubt the lesson, besides being common to most
thinkers of a destructive type, was then needed with a peculiar
urgency. Scholastic philosophy and ecclesiastical orthodoxy both
insisted on the priority of doctrine over practice. The whole pro-
gress of mediaeval thought had been in this direction. ' Believe as
we tell you,' said the clergy, ' that is all that is necessary. ' ' Receive
our axioms and ratiocinations/ said the schoolman, ' and you will then
, attain wisdom. 7 ' Not so,' rejoined Petrarca. ' Wisdom is not to be
liound in speculation, whether of the Church or the schools. It con-
\ /sists in the cultivation of virtue, in the practical discharge of duties
| to God and man. Speculation is often deceived. It is as manifold in
* I quality as philosophers are many in number. It tends to create skepti-
\ cism. On the other hand virtue and holiness are liable to none of these
\doubts and vacillations. Whatever else is uncertain, their intrinsic
excellence is assured. They are ultimate certainties, independent
of all human judgments and opinions. It cannot be denied that
Petrarca is here a true precursor of the Reformation, one who would
fain have restored to the Christian Church the original law of its
Founder.

But there is another aspect of Petrarca's skepticism, as there is
f another and most important side to his character ; for he is not only
^ a philosopher, and a rationalist, but also a mystic, and an ascetic.
While, therefore, in his former capacity, he takes refnge from intel-
lectual puzzles by adopting a position of confessed ignorance, he
manifests, as a mystic, his restless tendencies, by contrasting all the
conceivable antagonisms which pertain to the lot of humanity. He
is thus possessed with that antithetical equilibrating instinct which
marks so many free-thinkers; and which, when fully developed, results
in the intellectual deadlock of two-fold truth. The work which he
devotes to this subject is entitled De remediis utriusque Fortunm.
It reflects clearly, as Professor Bartoli remarks, ' the perpetual
antitheses between which the mind of the writer fluctuates.' 2
In the first Book, ' Hope ' and ' Joy ' on the one side contend with

1 See the solemn invocation of Omniscience as a witnesss for the truth of
this protestation, Op. cit, ii. p. 1039.
f J Primi due Seccli, etc., p. 462.

General Causes and Leaders. 123

1 Reason ' on the other. The former alleging all the joyous, pleasure-
able and promising aspects of existence, while Reason retorts by
ruthlessly presenting the opposing aspect in each case, and by a
lugubrious ringing of the changes on pain, grief, disappointment,
disease and death. In the second Book, ' Fear ' and ' Pain ' hold
briefs for the ills of humanity, but are again encountered by the same
mocking Reason, who endeavours to prove that they are not evils,
but benefits. The theoretical conclusion of the book is pessimism,
with asceticism as its practical corollary. Petrarca finds nothing
more fragile, nothing more unquiet than existence. The mood is one
to which he gives expression in several of his works, as e.g. in the
De Vita Solitaria. Its most developed form is contained in the De
Contemptu Mundi, a work which he calls his secret ; and on which I
have shortly a few remarks to make.

But the mysticism which formed so large a part of Petrarca's
nature has another and more commonly recognized presentation.
And here we come to the Petrarca of the Rime : here also we touch
upon the vexed question of Laura, whose name is so closely con-
nected with his in the romance of European literature. Her actual
existence, and complete identity, is now granted by most Petrarchist
scholars, since the publication of De Sade's work. 1 Her family,
parentage, husband, children, the chief events of her life are chroni-
cled with the dry particularity of a Registrar's return. But there
remains an element in the question only partially solved : the extent
and manner of the idealization, or as Professor De Sanctis calls it,
'The transfiguration of Laura.' 3 What was the form in which
Petrarca conceived the object of his passionate adoration after death ?
Partly, no doubt, she was deified. The vision of Laura was to her
lover, while on earth, what the celestial vision of God would be to
him in eternity : — 8

' Siccome eterna vita e veder Dio,
Ni piu si bra ma, nl tramar piu lice,
Cosi me, donna, il voi veder, felice
Fa in questo breve e f rale viver mio ' :

Partly she was beatified, conceived as a model of womanly purity, an-
other Madonna. 4 Partly also she came to symbolize Intellectual Beauty,

1 The most recent oppugner of De Sade's theory is Dr. Koerting in his
Leben und Werke, p. 694, etc.

1 Saggio critico sul Petrarca di F. de Sanctis, chap. ix. p. 122.

* Comp. Fiorentino, Scritti Varii, p. 122.

4 In the De Contemptu Mundi Augustine sneers at Petrarca's estimate of
Laura. ( Nihil enim adversabor, sit regina, sit sancta, sit Dea certe.

An Phoebi soror, an Nympharum sanguinis una ? '—Op., I. p. 854.

1 24 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

or Truth. Petrarca's passion, with all its overcharged sentiment,
and its undoubtedly sensuous character, has also a large admixture
of intellectualism. Laura, the unattainable object of his youthful as-
piration, became the symbol of other unattained desires, e.g. undoubted
Truth, unalloyed happiness. She sums up the illusive, unrealized
character of so many objects and pursuits, philosophical, political,
literary, social and religious by which he had been in life so strongly
attracted, but of which he had ascertained by bitter experience the
unsatisfying character. It is only by remembering this intense ideali-
zation of what at first was a very ordinary passion that we can attach
any real meaning to some parts of his Canzoniere. Take e.g. the sonnet
in which he relates that walking one day on the side of the Liguria,
and perceiving a laurel bush, he ran so eagerly to inspect it closer, in
remembrance of Laura, that he did not perceive a ditch lying in the
way, into which he fell ; or the passage in which he says the sun,
being jealous of Laura's regard for her lover, when she turned her
back to his light, immediately enveloped himself in clouds. Speaking
of intellectual truth or beauty we can understand and appreciate
such metaphors. Over eagerness in the chase for truth has led many
of its lovers into a pitfall ; and the spiritual light of truth might
not only challenge the physical light of the sun, but even claim a
superiority. This conception of Laura as an ideal which unified his
various aspirations after truth, fame, beauty, freedom, also serves
to explain what, on the theory that the mere woman was the sole
object of his passion, must seem inexplicable. I allude to his inter-
course with the poor unfortunate who was the mother of his children
during the precise period when most of his sonnets were written. 1
Either the Laura of those highly wrought productions must have
been an ideal personage, or her lover was a profligate beneath con-
tempt. 8

Laura's death imparted a new direction, a profounder intensity to
this idealization. Petrarca now learns, definitively, that his lifelong
quest, his hopes and desires, only held him in suspense.

* Tenner molt anni in dubbio il mio desire.'

Whatever he may have once pretended, he is now persuaded that the
object of his passion is not to be realized on earth.

1 Comp. Mezieres, Pitrarque, chap. iv. See also Villari, Macchiavelli, Eng.
Trans., i. pp. 115, 116.

* Compare his reply to Augustine in the third Dial, of De Contemptu Mundi,
when he charges him with the base nature of his love. 'Ego enim nihil
unquam turpe, imo vero nisi pulcherrimum amasse me recolo. 1 Op., i. p. 853.

General Causes and Leaders. 125

' Quella ch' io cerco e non ritrovo in terra.'

Laura herself warns her lover of the same truth.

' Mio hen non cape in in telle tto umano
Spirito ignudo sono, e in ciel mi godo
Quel che tu cerchi e terra gia molti anni.'

But Petrarca not only appreciates the disillusionizing effect of * Laura
in heaven/ but he also perceives the stimulus and excitation induced
by his earthly passion. He refuses to call his love an error ; at least,
if it be an error, it is one from which he will not be willingly parted. 1
He intends to cherish it as long as he lives. Thus he comes to admit
the mental value of that long trial of unrealized passion. He finds
it better to be spared the rueful experience of ' love's sad satiety.'
He begins to perceive that, for man as he is constituted, with infinite v
desires and finite means of gratification, fruition is not the supremest j
good. His ' Suspense of passion ' has therefore produced the same /
results as intellectual doubt and uncertainty. It has prompted to
further and fuller effort, and made him find his happiness in that
effort. 3 This, it seems to me, is one great lesson of Petrarca's Rime,
and of his relation to Laura. Nor, in passing, is it unimportant to
point out how the same feeling of pure aspiration underlies most of
the skeptical truth-seeking of the Renaissance. It is at the bottom of,
and gives a substantial value to, Dante's Beatrice-worship. It colours
much of the idealizations and imaginative desires of the poets of
chivalry, Ariosto and Boiardo. It may be detected even under the
grinning mask of Pulci ; and the animalism of Boccaccio serves to dis-
guise rather than hide the same sacra fames for the unattainable.
A like feeling prompted the passionate reverence of the Renaissance
for the intellectual and artistic beauty revealed by works of antiquity.
But in its highest, most passionate, most self-devouring form we have
it in Giordano Bruno, whose expressive words ' per amor de la vera
sapienza, e studio de la vera contemplatione m' affatico, mi cruccio, e
mi tormento,' may well pair off with Petrarca's well-known line : —

' Mille piacer non valgono un tormento.'

1 Comp. Opera, i. p. 858. Fiorentino, Scritti Vdrii, p. 121, and on the whole
question see Prof. Bartoli's chap. ( L'Amore del Petrarca,' in 1 Primi due Secoli,
etc., p. 491.

1 It is interesting to note the different forms of idealization of Beatrice by
Dante and Laura by Petrarca. In harmony with Dante's dogmatic instincts,
Beatrice is transformed into a symbolical image of Theology, and an authori-
tative expounder of dogmas. While Laura, in accordance with her lover's
freer tendencies, becomes to him the beatified type of unrealized aspiration.

126 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Whatever the form the desire takes, whether art, love, nature, truth,
God, it is characterized by the same features of painful weariness and
intense eagerness : in Shelley's words

' The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.'

Nor is this final conception of a beatified Laura unimportant taken
in connexion with Petrarca's mystic pessimism. The extreme form
of this feeling I have already glanced at ; but in his De contemptu
Mundi it almost verges on Nihilism. This work, no doubt, reflects
the strife between the asceticism of mediaeval Christianity and the
naturalism of the Renaissance ; but its deeper significance seems to
me to consist in the additional motive for the ' Contempt of the World '
furnished by the failure of his aspirations for love, for fame and for
truth. In this respect Petrarca may be likened to other skeptics
(Bishop Huet, e.g.) who looked forward to a future existence for that
demonstrated truth they were unable to find in this. 1 Thus, to
Petrarca, his aspiration seemed the path leading from earth to heaven ;
his earthly love had taught him what heavenly love meant; and his
desire of human fame led him to aspire for divine. Hence the ' Welt-
schmerz ' of Petrarca is not in reality the unintellectual, obscurantist,
half-brutish contempt of the world which characterizes the cloistral
literature of the middle ages. No doubt he feels

* The heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world.'

But the feeling does not induce despair, nor does it hinder research.
Indeed, it may well be doubted whether it really occupied such a
large place in his mind as his works appear to suggest. 8 Throughout
his life Petrarca was a searcher, and his search transcends the grave,
which he terms ' the exit from his labyrinth. 7 The spiritualized
and intellectual Laura, whom he says s he really loved on earth, he

1 Comp. on this point Profe8aor Bartoli: 'Nella sua irrequietezza, nell'
ondeggiare contiiiuo tra due estremi, nell' aspirare incessantemente alle
serenita del paradiso, e nel non trovare mai che le agitazioni dell' inferno ;
nell' eterno dissidio con se medesimo : in questo sta, se io non m' inganno, il
fondo vero del carattere del Petrarca.' — J Primi due Secoli delta Letteratura
ItaL, p. 442.

* Comp. e.g. the numerous passages on this point accumulated hy Prof.
Bartoli. I Primi due Secoli, etc., pp. 442, 448, notes.

8 De Contemptu Mundi, Dial, iii., Op. i. 854. 4 Neque enim ut putas, mortali
rei animum addixi, ne me tarn corpus noveris amasse quam animam moribus

General Causes and Leaders. 127

expects to find in heaven. The truth and beauty for which he here
sighed in vain he may discover there. The glory of his earthly yearn-
ing may be the prelude to immortality.

It is time to sum up my remarks on Petrarca. As the first of the
Italian Humanists he has a claim on our consideration second only \
to that of Pomponazzi. He is, as we have seen, a free-thinker, and /
a confessed skeptic. Freedom of every kind, political, literary,
religious, was for him an absolute necessity. Sometimes his passion
for it led him into difficulties, as e.g. when he sided so enthusiastically
with the ill-advised attempt of Rienzi. To him it appeared a noble
enterprise, having liberty for its object ; and sanctioned by the needs
of the present as well as hallowed by the glories of the past. No
doubt Petrarca, to quote the authoress of Corinne, i mistook reminis-
cences for anticipations ; ' but the mistake was founded upon, and
attested, a fervent passion for liberty.

Petrarca's immense influence on his own age, as well as on subse-
quent times cannot be denied. When himself and Boccaccio formed the
neucleus of a literary society at Florence, the town became a centre
of literary interests and animated discussion ; which was a foretaste
of its cultured eminence under the Medici. If all this Renaissance-
fermentation was not productive of much lasting work it was at least \
full of promise for the future. Petrarca and his fellow Humanists j
conferred an enormous service by merely spreading the knowledge,^
they had acquired of the works and thoughts of the ancients. It
was important, in days when literature was confined in a great
measure to the few who were able to buy MSS., that the results of
their investigations should be known as widely and as speedily as
possible. The circle of Petrarca's classical knowledge has been *^\
recently investigated by Dr. Koerting with a masterly completeness J
not as yet equalled by any Italian or French Petrarchist. 1 The ser-
vices rendered by our free-thinker to the cause of European enlight-
enment are, as Dr. Koerting points out, to be measured by the new
materials he excavated from the quarry of classical learning, not by
his methods and interpretations, considered from the standpoint of the
nineteenth century. It is quite easy, as the same writer remarks, to "
discover and marshal in formidable array the errors of Petrarca's
classical scholarship. But the task would be ungenerous and would

humana transcendentibus delectatum, quorum exemplo, qualiter inter ceeli-
colas vivatur admoneo,' and passim.

1 Petrarca's Leben und Werke, chap. viii. ' Der Umfang des Wissens Pe-
trarca's,' pp. 458-514. Com p. on Dr. Koerting's work the appreciative Review
of Pro! Zumbini in Nuova Anlalogia, Feb. 1st, 1879, p. 560. The learned
reviewer calls the 8th chapter the most novel and valuable portion of the work.

128 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

merely serve to confirm the truth of the German proverb, ' When
kings build, carters readily find employment.' l

After all, Petrarca's chief glory is the noble stand he made against
mediae valism, against its philosophy, against its dogma, its false
'-y f science, its gross superstition. He was thus a philosophical Protes-
^ [ tant, who took Cicero's Works for his authority, instead of St. Paul's
\ vEpistles. Perhaps the tolerant and semi-Pagan culture he advocated
was more suited to his time and country than an austerer substitute
for Papal Christianity would have been. If he did not, as I have
said, care to assume the part of an active Reformer, he was quite
capable of the mental independence pertaining to such a function.
We may say of him, more than of Dante, that his strong individualism,
the indomitable self-assertion that prompted and sustained his sever-
ance from mediaeval thought, was the greatest boon he could then
have conferred on humanity. Medievalism implies, as we know,
parties, communities, sects, companies and guilds. Isolated thought
or action was liable to be branded as a crime. Only men of
/ vigorous intellectual fibre, and calm self-concentration, were able to
' [ stand aloof from the confederate crowds, and avow their resolve, as
I Petrarca did, to swear by no master in philosophy and secular learn-
ing, 2 and in religion to bow to no authority but that of conscience.

V

. Proceeding with our biographical illustrations of the

Free-thought of the Renaissance, we come in due course
to Boccaccio. Probably the work in all Italian literature which is
the most popular, and best known, exponent of the skepticism of the
fourteenth century is the Qecdmeron of Boccaccio. For our purpose,
that writer may stand as Hhe litterateur of the humanistic move-
ment. Not that Boccaccio was himself a skeptic, or, on philosophical
p- grounds, even a free-thinker. There was always an element of weak-
y ness, and even of superstition, in his character ; and towards the end
V of his life he became a devotee. In this respect he contrasted greatly
with his friend Petrarca, whose mind was of a far firmer texture ;
and whose free-thought, notwithstanding his profession, was of a
more fearless and independent character. Nevertheless Boccaccio
contributed more than either Dante or Petrarca to advancing free-
culture as a popular movement ; while as to the effect of his works
on the formation of the Italian language, he ranks next to those two
giants — the three forming a trio unique in the history of literature.

1 Koerting, Op. cit., p. 518.

* He quotes with approval Horace's dictum,

4 Nullius add ictus jurare in verba Magistri. 1 Op. Lat, ii. p. 1051.

General Causes and Leaders. 1 29

The author of the Decameron was born a.d. 1313. His father was
a serious and unfeeling Florentine merchant, his mother a lively and
affectionate Parisienne. Hence Dr. Landau * happily applies to him
Goethe's lines —

1 Vom Vater haV ich die Statur
Des Lebens ernstes Ftthren ;
Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur
Und Lust zu fabuliren.'

The unhappy fate of his much-loved mother forms the subject of one
of his tales. After a few years' elementary instruction in Latin,
Boccaccio was taken from school, and compelled by his father to pre-
pare for the irksome calling of a merchant to which he had destined
him. But instead of attending to his ledgers and invoices, his time
was wholly taken up with making verses and studying Dante. 9 At
last his father, despairing of the conversion of the young poetic
enthusiast into a man of business, sent him to Naples to study the
Canon-law. But this was almost as arid an occupation as the per-
petual contemplation of the rows of figures in his father's ledgers.
His residence at Naples was however of immense importance in the
development of his character, both as a man and as a poet. Dante
introduced him to the literature, Naples to the life of the Renais-
sance. There he became acquainted with a court and society whose
immoral laxity is depicted in imperishable colours in the pages of
the Decameron. It was also fruitful as the commencement of his
literary career, for at Naples he composed his earlier poetry and tales.
Boccaccio, it was evident, was not destined to achieve fame by the
study of the Decretals any more than he was to acquire wealth in a
merchant's office. Incidentally, perhaps, his readings in jurisprudence
served to complete his education, by enlarging his acquaintance with
Latin authors, and confirming his taste for the ' sacra filosofia ' of
Pagan culture. After a few years his father's death left him to his
own devices, to pursue the calling of poet and literateur for which
Nature had so indisputably designed him. 8

1 See his Giovanni Boccaccio seine Leben und seine Werke, Stuttgart, 1877,
p. 3.

* Compare what he says of himself in the Corbaccio (Op. Vclg. y v. p. 185) :
1 Gli studi adunque alia sacra filosofia pertinenti infino dalla tua puerizia piu
assai che il too padre non avrebbe voluto te piacquero, e massimente in quella
parte che a poesia appartiene, nella quale per avventura tu hai con piu
fervore <T animo ohe con altezaa d' ingegno seguita.' Comp. Baldelli, Vita, p. 15.

* F. Villani, in his Vile <T uomini Ulustri (p. 9), has a story, bristling with
improbabilities, of Boccaccio's receiving his first impulse in the direction of
classical poetry at the grave of Virgil, when he was twenty -eight years of

VOL. I. K

i

\
i

'lit

n -

1 30 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Among the influences which contributed to form the character of
Boccaccio, and which impelled and sustained him in his free-thinking
course, no small place must be assigned to his friendship with Pe-
trarca. Few literary friendships could be more pure and genial, less
alloyed by selfishness or disturbed by misunderstandings than this.
The great Humanist was then in the zenith of his fame, the courted
and admired of all the foremost among European potentates. Boc-
caccio was the comparatively unknown author of a few tales and
poetical pieces. The actual relation, under the circumstances, was, no
doubt, that between a loving master and an attached disciple, rather •
than between two literary stars of nearly the same magnitude. Yet
+ between the two men sprang up an intimacy and mutual regard des-
\^ tined to last beyond the grave. Both men were, in truth, animated
by the same thirst for knowledge, the same devotion to ancient litera-
ture. Both were pioneers in the same tacit undertaking. Both aimed
at freeing the human intellect and conscience from the thraldom of
scholasticism. Both possessed, though in unequal degrees, the same
feeling of literary independence. 1 To use Petrarca's expressive words,
when he urged his friend to take up his abode in his house, they were
two men ' unum cor habentes, 1 i sharing a single heart.' 3

Boccaccio's earlier works do not contain much for our purpose, nor
is their literary value great. Still they indicate the lines of free-
thought which converge and culminate in the Decameron. At some
period of his earlier life he must have studied the different collections
of tales and adventures, legends of chivalry, romance, etc., which
formed the popular literature of the fourteenth century. A diligent
investigation of the sources whence he derived the materials for the
Decameron, as well as for his minor works, shows us that his re-
searches in that department extended over a wide field. 8 Bouterwek
supposes that he found time for this ' novel reading ' when he was
imprisoned at a merchant's desk. However that may be, the predomin-
ant agency in the evolution of his liberal culture seems to me to
have been classical. This is proved as well by his association with
Petrarca, as by his own earlier works, especially by the earliest of
them, Filocopo. In reality this is a Pagan love-tale, imitated and
expanded to a wearisome length, from the old French B^mance of

age ! Comp. Mazzuckelli's note on the passage (p. 75), and see Voigt, Wieder-
belebung, etc. p. 104.

1 C' nip. Mazzuchelli, on Villani, p. 82.

* His words are 'Sum vero cui uni tantum suppetit, quantum abunde
suffioiat duobus unum cor habentibus, atque unam domum.'

8 This subject is f ully discussed in Dr. Landau's Die Quellen des Decamerone,
Wien, 1869.

General Causes and Leaders. 131

Florio and Blanchflower. The characters and environment are those
of heathen antiquity. Christianity, as a distinctive creed, can hardly
be said to exist in its pages. At most it is only an insignificant appan-
age of Pagandom. The deities who govern the world are those of
Olympus, and are mostly invested with their classical personalities
and attributes; though sometimes, in the customary Renaissance
manner, they become personifications of virtues and vices, and their
names equivalents for the persons of the Christian Trinity. Christ is
called the Son of Jupiter ; l Pluto is the fallen Lucifer ; the Pope,
it is difficult to say why, is transformed from the Vicegerent of
Christ to the Vicar of Juno, and the goddess reveals her wishes to
him by means of Iris, as if he were a hero of Homeric story. All the
Olympians are decorated with Christian titles. Jupiter is the omni-
potent King of the Universe. Juno, Venus, Mars, and Neptune, with
the other divinities have the epithet * Saint ' prefixed to their names.
Florio, the love-struck hero of the tale, implores the help of ' Saint
Venus,' and solicits her intercession with her son Cupid, in nearly the
same terms as a devout Catholic might have used in addressing the
Madonna. The same epithet ( Saint' is prefixed to the works and
teaching of the ancients, thus we find ' the Holy Books of Ovid,' ' the
sacred principles of Pythagoras/ etc. The hero of Boccaccio's story
is finally converted to Christianity by a monk Hilarius, who, in his
summary of Christian history and doctrine, places on precisely the
same level the dogmas of the Church and the most puerile legends of
heathen antiquity or ecclesiastical history. *

Though the style of the JFHlocopo, as of his other minor works, is
far inferior in artistic simplicity, in clearness and point, and in
delicate humour and sarcasm, to that of the Decameron, it possesses
situations which vividly recall those of the later work. Especially is
this the case with the 4th Book which describes a supposed ' Court of
Love ' held at Naples. Here the scenery and environment, the in-
cidents and the language,* closely resemble those of the Decameron,

1 See the work itself, passim in vols. vii. and viii. of the Opere Volgari, and
Comp. Dr. Landau's summary, Giovanni Boccaccio, etc., 48-58.

* See Hilarius's exposition, which may be referred to as illustrating the
elementary teaching, both Biblical and classical, of the fourteenth century.
Boccaccio, Op, Vclg. y voL viii. p. 909, etc., etc.

8 Here e.g. are sentences which might be paralleled by numerous passages
in the Decameron, ' Era gia Apollo col carro della luce salito al meridiano
cerchio, e quasi con diritto occhio riguardava \o. riyestita terra, quando le
donne e i giovani in quel luogo adunati lasciato il festeggiare, per diverse
parti del giardino cercando dilettevoli ombre e divers i diletti per diverse
schiere prendevano, f uggendo il caldo acre che i dilicati corpi offendeva,' etc.,
etc.— Op. Volg., viii. pp. 81-32.

v

132 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

and may possibly have supplied the germ of the more famous work.
But however this may be, the Filocopo, which occupied its author for
some years, may be taken as indicating the direction of Boccaccio's
training under the influence of Petrarca ; and we find in it a clue to
much of the humanistic comprehensiveness, the tolerance and free-
thought which are distinguishing attributes of the Decameron. 1

Passing now to this master work of Boccaccio's, the circumstances
which originated it represent forcibly the thought and social manners
of Italy in the middle of the fourteenth century. A company of
high-born youths and maidens, terrified by the ravages of the Black
Death then devastating Florence, agree to retire into the country and
to solace their seclusion by the enjoyment of lovely scenery, story-
telling, feasting, music and dancing. There seems to me a curious
and not uninstructive parallel between this supposed origin of a work
destined to become the vade meeum of the Renaissance, and the real

^ genesis of that great movement. In either case there was an aban-
'doment of a city of the dead, for more wholesome and uninfected
localities. Men were leaving the mortuary of the middle ages, with
its livid corpse-like forms of superstitions and corruptions, its science
stunted by ignorance, its Christianity eaten into by dogma and
sacerdotalism, and were commencing a new life under the benigner
influences of Humanism and Naturalism, of reason and of culture.
The transition is marked in imperishable characters by the contrast
which Boccaccio draws between the loathsome city in which religion,
morality, friendship, decency and whatever else could give value to
human life having perished, were lying unburied like so many fester-
ing corpses, and ( il luogo sopra una piccola montagnetta, da ogni
parte lontano alquanto a lie nostre strade, di varii albuscelli e piante
tutte di verdi fronde ripieno, piacevoli a riguardare.' * The ' piccola
montagnetta ' of the Decameron might almost be regarded as a Pisgah

* height whence Boccaccio obtained a glimpse of the Promised Land,
into the possession of which Italy and Europe were then entering.
But if the occasion of the work suggests these affinities to the epoch
that gave it birth, from an ethical standpoint it reveals the heartless-
ne8S and irreligion of the same period. Never was there a more start-
ling illustration of the Epicurean maxims 'Carpe diem,' 'Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' than that furnished by the
behaviour of Boccaccio's heroes and heroines. That such a course of

1 Com p. Landau, Qio. Boc. y p. 48. Dr. Landau also regards the Filostrato,
Ninfale Fiesolano, and Fiammetta as preparatory exercises in language, tone
and subject to the Decameron.

* lntr. to Decameron (the text of which is here quoted from vols. i.-v. of
Moutier's Edition of the Opere Volgati), vol. i. p. 82.

General Causes and Leaders. 133

conduct, such an exaltation of selfishness, such a flagrant forget ful-
ness of the prime principles of Christianity, should have been
depicted by a writer certainly well acquainted with the ordinary
motives by which men and women of the time were guided, shows
us how far religion and duty had ceased to be effective agencies in
human conduct. Remembering the circumstances of the time, the
behaviour of the chief personages of the Decameron assumes the
aspect of a veritable dance of death. We are reminded of the reck-
lessness, the absolute want of fellow feeling which characterized the
Athenian Plague, as described by Thucydides. Curiously enough,
Boccaccio describes almost in the words of the Greek historian, or of
his Roman imitator, the effects of the pestilence in producing a feel-
ing of debasing selfishness ; but it never seems to strike him, if we
except the somewhat halting apology contained in the Introduction,
that the occasion of his work is also a case in point.

What we might thus call the plot of the Decameron is a fitting
vestibule to the book itself. This is redolent of Free-thought pass-
ing into licence, of independence of judgment not always restrained
by discretion, of skepticism too spontaneous and unregulated to be
philosophical, of an irreligion degenerating into impiety, and of a
naturalism whose occasional excess becomes unhuman and so far un-
natural. Allowance must of course be made for the circumstances
among which the work was engendered. Petrarca justified its free
tone on account of the youth of the author, though his biographers
have shown that Boccaccio was about forty years of age when he com-
posed it. Other writers seem to make it the accidental outcome of
the social demoralization effected by the Plague. 1 That something
may be said for the latter view I have already admitted. Taken as
a whole, the work bears the indelible impress of its terrible sur-
roundings. It reminds one of a landscape whose foreground is lit up
with brilliant sunshine, but which is curtained behind with a heavy
bank of purple and livid thunder-clouds. Amid the gaiety and
jocund humour, the amusing adventures, and the reckless enjoyment
of life, of the tales ; the plague-stricken city of Florence looms in the
background like a spectral abode of Dis and the Furies. Boccaccio
spreads his intellectual feast, he artistically arranges his gold and
silver vessels, he prepares his choicest and most delicate viands, but
the table-cover which supports them is, in reality, a funeral pall.
With almost a single stroke of the pen he paints the confusion of the
time, when he tells how the wild animals so long unhunted had lost
all fear of man. That the demoralization thus strikingly indicated

1 Com p. Dr. Landau, Gio. Boc., p. 128.

1 34 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

should have extended to man, and infected more or less his concep-
tions of religion and duty, is scarcely to be wondered at. Neverthe-
less we must, on a complete view of the subject, ascribe the tone and
temper of the work to other and more general causes than the social

^ disturbance produced by the Black Death. In reality the Decameron
is a genuine outcome of the Renaissance —the free movement of
thought and life experienced in Italy for the two preceding cen-
turies. It is the third link in the literary chain of which the first
two consists of the Divina Commoedia of Dante and the Rime of
Petrarca. No doubt ' la moritifera pestilenza ' intensified for the
time causes already in operation. The liberation of thought, initiated
by new intellectual life and by a reaction against ecclesiastical
thraldom, became temporarily merged in the social and moral dis-
organization caused by the Plague. Regarding the work as a popular
exponent of an age of so much thought-fermentation, it is a little
surprising to find in it an almost entire absence of any intellec-

^ tual or speculative interest. The company are almost as devoid of
serious thought, or reflection, as if they were children. A serene
air of optimism prevades much of the work which is in the grimmest
possible contrast with its melancholy surroundings. The principle
which Voltaire applied with bitter irony to the Earthquake of Lisbon,
i.e. l This is the best of all possible worlds/ is received with
acquiescence by Dioneo, Fiammetta, and their companions in circum-
stances just as terrible and just as provocative of recalcitrant
skepticism ; and their resolution to l eat, drink, and be merry/ is the
practical outcome of their opinion. Even Voltaire's ridicule of the
ordinary theories of Providence might almost have been justified at
such a season. It had at least the merit of being an exercise of
reason on the problems of the universe, whereas Boccaccio's heroes
and heroines act and think as if their laissez /aire Epicureanism
were an adequate solution of all such enigmas. No doubt the form
of the book precludes anything like a reasoned investigation of truth,
even if Boccaccio's intellect were equal to the task ; but he does not
approach, even incidentally and lightly, as e.g. Montaigne does in his

fEs&ais, a philosophical estimate of truth and the bases on which it is
grounded. The skepticism of the Decameron y in short, is literary and
popular rather than philosophical and scientific, as was that of Pom-
ponazzi. Engendered by an opposition to ecclesiastical dogma, it is
- rather negative than positive ; at least its limits are never accurately
determined. The principles to which Boccaccio appealed and by
which he required that the dogmas of the Church and every other
form of authoritative truth should be tested, were no more recondite
\ ones than reason, nature, common sense, the social instincts and the

General Causes and Leaders. 135

interests of humanity. We have the keynote of the book in one of
those casual remarks, which, as Shelley has pointed out, Boccaccio
often employs to express things which have serious meanings. 1 It is
Pampinea'8 address when she expounds and justifies the plan of the
Decameron. ' Donne mie care, voi potete cosl come io molte volte avere
udito chi a niuna persona fa ingiuria chi onestamente usa la sua
ragioni : 8 words which strikingly indicate both the negative concep-
tion of human duty and the appeal to the individual reason, or con-
science, which are distinguishing features of the Decameron.
Boccaccio like his Master, Petrarca, and in a lesser degree like Dante,
asserted human knowledge, judgment and independence, as the
antagonistic principles of excessive and unprincipled dogma. Nor
indeed was it necessary, for the popular object of the Decameron, to
enter upon a systematic exposition of skepticism, and the foundations
of valid belief. What is called a reformation, or a modification, over
a wide area of popular thought is rather a result than a process. The
latter, consisting of the operation of hidden and subtle agencies, is
passed before the change itself becomes manifest. Thus it was with
the Renaissance, as typified by the Decameron. The human con-
science in Italy had already assumed an attitude of dogmatic negation.
It had already determined on the impassable gulf between morality
and Roman Christianity. It did not require a mathematical demon-
stration of the absurdity e.g. of image and relic worship, or a delibe-
rate insistence on the intolerable abuses to which other Romanist
dogmas were exposed. That Papal Christianity was an evil had
become a foregone conclusion, even among those who could not see
how it was to be remedied. All that Italian free-thinkers needed
was a statement of their unbelief in the most emphatic terms. This
the Decameron provided. Tacitly, and incidentally, it was a col-
lection of popular convictions on the subject-matter of Romanist
dogmas. This fact explains the immediate and enormous popularity
of the work in Italy itself. What Italians had hitherto derived in
a great measure from foreign sources, from Provencal poetry, French

1 Shelley's opinion of Boccaccio, whom he preferred to Ariosto and Tasso,
seeius worth quoting : ' How mnch do I admire Boccaccio ! What descriptions
of nature are those in his little introductions to every new day ! It is the
morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it obscure to
us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of the fair ideal of
human life considered in its social relations. His more serious theories of love
agree especially with mine. He often expresses things lightly too, which
have serious meanings of a very beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the
opposite of the Christian, stoical, ready-made and worldly system of moral*,'
etc. See Mr. Symond's monograph on Shelley, p. 111.

* Intro, to Decam., Op. Volg., i. 24.

136 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

fabliaux, and Eastern legends, they had now in their own purest
Tuscan dialect. The Decameron was the text book of Renaissance
skepticism. Nor was it only their doctrines that Italians dis-
covered in the pages of the Decameron. Its characters were well-
marked types of men who might have been found by dozens in the
streets of Rome, Naples, and Florence. No matter where the
supposed scene of the story is laid, or from what literary source
it is derived, its personages, their idiosyncrasies, modes of thought
and manners, as painted by Boccaccio, are all native Italian. Not
more truly do the * Christian ' and * Christiana ' of Bunyan's Pil-
grim's Progress represent ideal types of English Puritanism than
Boccaccio's characters personate the men of the Renaissance. Even
that prince of humorous hypocrites Ciappeletto has numerous counter-
parts among his countrymen. For the pious friar who improves the
occasion of his supposed exemplary end, thus addresses his audience :
'e voi, maladetti da Dio, per ogni fuscello di paglia che vi si volge
tra' piedi, bestemmiate Iddio e la Madre, e tutta la corte di Paradiso '
— words which seems to show that Renaissance freedom of thought
had become so allied with licence of speech that we many accept the
most impious of Boccaccio's personages, and even Pulci's brutal
giant Margutte, as not greatly over-drawn caricatures of the period.
In this particular indeed, the worst characters of Italian novelists, or
Romantic poets, might easily be paralleled by historical instances of
undoubted authenticity, as the readers of such works as Sismondi's
Republics or Mr. Symond's volumes on the Renaissance must be fully
aware. a

It is quite in harmony with Boccaccio's unsf^culative temperament
that we have no attempt in his works to discuss, or even formally 10
question, any of the primary abstract beliefs of Christianity. His
polemical attitude to Roman dogma begins when it clashes with
human duty and the practical concerns of life. We have nothing in
him resembling Pulci's sarcasms on the Trinity, or immortality.
Yet so far as a uniform belief may be extracted from his writings,
his speculative conceptions on the subject of Christianity were largely
alloyed with the Pagan elements of his time. His notion of God
e.g. is complicated with the ideas of Fortune, Chance, Nature, as in
the case of other Renaissance thinkers. Nature is to him, as to Bruno
and Vanini, " the Parent of all things," and the relation in which men
and their shortcomings stand to her dictates is thus described, " la
benignita di Dio non guardare a' nostri errori, quando da cosa che per
noi veder non si possa procedano." l For Fortune he has such un-
qualified regard as to ascribe to its agency not only contingencies

1 Op. Yolg., i. p. 56.

General Causes and Leaders. 137

tending to virtue, but even opportunities for vice. His general con-
ception of Providence is that it works by immutable laws; 1 but he
seems to hint his disbelief in a doctrine of special or particular
Providence ; and says that men under the circumstances should have
recourse to human reason. • If this, as seems likely, was Boccaccio's
real belief, it would go far to explain the philosophical indifference
with which he contemplated the ravages of the Black Death.

Boccaccio, so far as we gather from his writings, does not appear to
have attempted a separation between the Christianity of the Gospels
and its ecclesiastical evolution. But he is clearly alive not only
to the fact of its perversion, but also to the modes by which it has
been effected. The verbal jugglery e.g. by which unchristian deeds
were labelled with Christian designations he exposes scornfully and
incisively. 2 Nor does he fail to observe the pernicious astuteness of
sacerdotalism, by which the very excellencies of Christianity were
made to subserve the selfish and immoral objects of the Church. 3 He
also insists on the example of Christ, as inculcating moral action as
well as moral teaching. 4 Like Petrarca and other leaders of the
Renaissance, Boccaccio employs against Rome all the armoury of his
invective and the keen incisiveness of his wit and raillery. Rome,
he says, was once the head, she is now the tail of the world. The
lives of her Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops are either denounced in
language vigorous and uncompromising as Luther's, or are castigated
by sarcasm and irony peculiarly his own. There is scarce a single
feature of Romish abuse and corruption to which Boccaccio does not
apply his lash. The invocation of saints, the worship -of images,
confessions, adoration of relics, penances, pilgrimages, canoniza-
tions, miracles, superstitious prayers, charms and crossings, alms-
giving, supposed death-bed conversions and the unscrupulous use of
such occasions by the clergy, popular conceptions of heaven, hell and
purgatory, the numberless tricks, impostures and juggleries of
monks and friars — in a word the whole doctrine, polity and worship
of Romanism, as it presented itself to the ordinary Italian of the
fourteenth century.

Nor are the limits of Boccaccio's free-thought reached by an enu-
meration of the dogmas and abuses which he has assailed. The story
of the Three Rings, which we have already alluded to, reveals a still
profounder phase of his unbelief. Limiting its scope to Monotheistic

1 Op. Yclg. % v. p. 84.
1 Op. } i. p. 60.
* Op., in. p. 84.

4 Op. } iii. p. 85, referring to Acts i. 1 : " Jesus began both to do and to
teach."

J

138 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

creeds, it is almost an assertion of religious indifference, a Renais-
sance mode of affirming the argument of Pope's lines :

* For forms of faith let angry zealots fight,
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.'

And the principle thus formally enounced is confirmed by incidental
remarks in other tales, as e.g. the conclusion of Ciappeletto's story,
that men may approach God by unworthy means, but if the worship
be sincere God does not regard the channel through which it is
conveyed. Indeed there are indications, both in the Decameron and
in his other writings, that at one part of his life Boccaccio shared
Petrarca's conception of religion as consisting largely of culture —
the Renaissance combination of ' Sweetness and Light.' Such seems
the meaning of the words put into the mouth of Guido Cavalcanti —
himself a foremost thinker of the time, and referred to with manifest
approval by Boccaccio. Cavalcanti, refusing to join a certain club or
society, was once surrounded by its members while walking in the
arched enclosure of St. John's Church. One of them said to him,
alluding to his supposed Epicureanism, ( Guido, you refuse to be of
our society, but when you have discovered that there is no God, 1
what good will you have done ? ' Guido, seeing himself surrounded,
said, * Signori, you may tell me what you please in your own ground,'
and, placing his hand on one of the arches, he vaulted lightly over it
and so escaped. Whereupon his persecutors thinking that he had
spoken without meaning, were corrected by one among them, who
said, 4 It is yourselves, Signori, who are without understanding, if
you cannot perceive that worthily and in few words he has spoken
to us the severest reproof possible. If you consider well, these arches
are the abode of the dead . . . and he calls them our ground (nostra
casa), to show us that we, and other men ignorant and unlearned as
we are, are in comparison with himself and learned men, worse than
dead, and therefore, we being here, are in our own abode.' Probably
in no other passage of the Decameron have we the mission of the
Renaissance, and its attitude to older forms of religious thought, so

1 Guido de Cavalcanti was the son of the Cavalcanti whom Dante in the
10th Canto of the Inferno describes as an Epicurean. (Com p. Villani, Vile
d 1 uomini Must., p. 60). The son was a free-thinker; but there is no ground
for supposing him an Atheist. See on this point Manni, Storia del Vecanu,
Part ii. p. 425, etc., who quotes the following words from Coipnt Magalotti's
Letters, which are applicable to all similar accusations in tjhe time of the
.Renaissance, 4 I mattematici passavano per Negromanti, i Fisici per poco
religiosi, e che i Professori di belle lettere, punto punto che la loro erudizione
sopraffactsse quella degli altri, erano subito diffamati per Eretbici ; tanto era
sopramne in quei tempi 1' ignoranza.'

General Causes and Leaders. 139

distinctly enumerated. Bat there is another aspect of the Decameron
which proves perhaps more than any other the extent and virulence
of the opposition to Romanist dogma which marked the Italians of
the fourteenth century. The most repulsive feature of the book, to a
man of Christian culture, is the application to obscene purposes and
objects of the most sacred words and ideas, doctrines and rites of the
Christian religion. 1 As a general characteristic of the period this is
of the greater importance, because it is a feature shared by most of
the popular literature of the Renaissance; indeed all the Italian
novelists 2 of this and the following centuries seem to vie with each
other in this flagrant violation of decency and good taste. Here
Free-thought seems to reach its climax of anti-Christian audacity.
The language of piety, of devotion, of ecclesiastical dogma, is not
only ingeniously perverted, but grossly travestied and burlesqued.
It is not therefore skepticism that we have here manifested ; indeed
the phenomenon may be said to be entirely independent of philo-
sophical grounds of dissent from Christianity ; it is rather a shame- }
less cynicism, a gross unfeeling parade of the worst passions of human
nature, which is indescribably repulsive, not only to a religious mind,
but to every man imbued with the faintest rudiments of morality.

Allowance should perhaps be made for the peculiarities of a natural
temperament, which seems now as then unable to distinguish between
wit and scurrility, and which can pass without any appreciable
interval or sense of difference from the extreme of superstition to
that of blasphemous ribaldry. Boccaccio admits, though he cannot
explain, the evil tendency of men to laugh at what is bad rather than
what is good, 3 it is at least the tendency of his countrymen, and is
one to which in the Decameron he habitually and excessively defers.
In other respects, also, nothing can be better adapted to Italian tastes
and aptitudes than the tone and manner of the Decameron. Nothing
could be more effective as a ' Dissuasive from Popery ' than Boccac-
cio's ridicule. Instead of philosophical arguments, ethical dis- 1
courses, virulent tirades and denunciations, he exposes the corruptions .
of the Church by raillery, wit, humour, sarcasm and irony — weapons/
always appreciated by the genuine Italian. What formal repre-
hension of clerical hypocrisy, e.g. could have operated so efficiently

1 In alluding to this feature of the Decameron, it may be remarked that
there is a strange want of decorum and good taste in M. Bonneau's Introduc-
tion to the recently published reprint of Le Macon's Translation. (Paris : I.
Liseux, 1878.) See e.g. vol. i., Avert., p. xvii.

* It may suffice to name Sacchetti and Masuccio as especially sinners in
this particular.

* Op. Volg.) iii. p. 107.

c

1 40 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

as Boccaccio's well-known examples. What elaborate refutation of
the worship of relics would have been so effective as Father Onion's
list of those he had seen with, and acquired from, the Patriarch of
Jerusalem. Unfortunately, however, men who are converted only by
their sense of the ludicrous do not always prove the most durable of
converts.

That Boccaccio was cognisant, and a little ashamed, of the coarse-
ness of the Decameron is well known. It is perhaps as an apology
for the whole work that he prefixed to one of his immoral tales the
admonition that its hearers must act as they do in a garden, i.e.
' pluck the roses and leave the briars behind.' But a more philo-
sophical justification might have been found in the depravity of the
Church. Boccaccio, we must remember, was the Hogarth, as Pulci
was the Rabelais, of the Italian Renaissance. His novels with all their
laxity, their scornful treatment of sacred things, were not imaginary
concoctions of vicious manners and opinions, assumed to characterize
a fictitious people ; they were forcible sketches drawn from the life,
with little extra colouring or tendency to caricature, of the ecclesiastics
and laymen of his time. He says himself, and we must accept his
statement as another half-hinted apology for his book, that the age
being libertine and lawless, his language might well be excused a
certain amount of licentiousness. 1 There is not a single lascivious

1 Op. Volg., iii. p. 171. For fair unexaggerated defences of the freedom and
naXvite of the Decameron, comp. Dr. Landau, p. 135, etc., and Dr. Koerting,
Boccaccio's Leben und Werke, p. 658, etc. The former asserts that the Prologue
to Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath 1 is more indecent than the worst parts of the
Decameron. He also suggests a comparison for apologetic purposes of
Boccaccio's work with St, Bernard's sermons, The Book of De la Tour Landry
for the instruction of his daughters, and the Gesta Romanorum. But the
most eloquent defence yet offered of the Decameron is that of Giosue Carducci,
in his Discorso, Ai parentali di G. Boccacci in Certaldo, pp. 18, 19. ( Certo,
poiche in Natura v' e il senso e nella societa i traviamenti e le colpe del senso,
cosl la materia sensuale fu maneggiata anche dal Boccaccio, come da molti
prima e depo di lui. Ma chi declamasse ch' egli guasto il costume, che spogli6
di fede e di pudicizia la donna, che degrada 1' amore, che attenta alia famiglia,
quegli dimenticherebbe o dissimulerebbe piu cose. Dimenticherebbe la passione
fedele della popolano Lisabetta e della principessa Gismonda, dimenticherebbe
lagentil cortesia di Federico degli Alberighi e legare di generosita tra Gisippo
e Tito Quinzio, dimenticherebbe le celesti sofferenze di Griselda, la pastorella
provata fino al martirio dal marito marchese, la Griselda a cui la poesia
cavalleresca nulla ha da contrapporre ne par da lontano. Dissimulerebbe
che le novelle ove il puro senso trionfa sono ben poche, che una ben piu grosso-
lana sensualita regnava gia da tempo anche nei canti del popolo, ed era stata
provocata dalle ipocrisie, del misticismo cavalleresco e dagli eccessi dell'
ascetismo. Dimenticherebbe o dissimulerebbe che il Boccaccio non distilla
a' suoi lettori i lenti filtri della volutta conmentale, non li perverte a cercare

General Causes and Leaders. 141

image or immoral description in the whole Decameron that might
not be paralleled, with far greater outrages on decency, in the lives
and writings of the clergy of his time. Boccaccio might have said
with one of his characters, that * it was too much to expect the sheep
to have more resolution and constancy than the shepherds.' The
excuses he makes for his work seem to me called forth by the fact of
its being written in Italian, and for that reason circulating among
the lower classes, to whom the open and reckless depravity of their
superiors was as yet a little strange. Petrarca, who was perfectly
cognisant of the life and conversation of the higher orders, both
ecclesiastic and lay, saw no more ground for animadverting on the
indecency of the Decameron than what was furnished by the warm
imagination of a youth of nigh forty years ! Besides, all the more
indecent among Boccaccio's tales are found in collections existing
before his time, and with which the cultured sections of Italian
society were quite familiar. It cannot be shown that he added to
their grossness ; his remodelling consisting chiefly in reclothing them
in his choice though somewhat Latinized Tuscan, and imparting to
them humour, liveliness, point, picturesqueness and vivacity.

But notwithstanding the indecency and profanity of portions of the
Decameron, it is by no means an unqualifiedly vicious book. Under-
lying, or side by side with, its immorality, and its seeming mockery
of religious topics, there is discernible a strong undercurrent of
regard for what is honourable, chaste and virtuous. 1 The contents
of the book have in fact the motley diversified character, as well as
the liveliness, excessive ingenuousness and point, of Montaigne's
Essays. Both are indeed representative works. Both describe and
embody, as in a kind of literary mosaic, the heterogeneous qualities of
a transition period of intellectual fermentation and uncertainty. In
both are found depravity side by side with virtuous teaching. Both
attempt an amalgam of Christianity and Paganism ; and both are dis-
tinguished by religious toleration and a broad conception of human
duties, beliefs and interests.

la felicita nella malattia delle languide fantasticherie, dell' ammollimento e
della effeminazione. II Boccaccio fu un poeta sano ; e 1' avvenimento dell a
pornocrazia in letteratura e impresa d' altri tempi e d' altri scrittori. 1 Com p.
on Boccaccio's treatment of women, the elaborate work of Attilio Hortis,
Studj sidle opere Latine del Boccaccio, pp. 76, 77, etc.

1 Comp. e.g. the 6th and 7th Novels of the 10th Day. Some authors have
supposed that the latter portion of the Decameron is less skeptical than the
former. Thus Settembrini remarks, ( La prima giornata comincia col dubbio,
T ultima dnisce colla fede nella virtu.' (Lezioni di Lett. Ital., vol. i. p. 170.)
But this seems accidental, and is partly attributable to the design of making
the Novels of each day bear upon a particular subject.

142 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

That the chief outcome of the Decameron was liberty of thought
and worship, that it expressed a healthy recoil against ecclesiastical
dogma, and that for this reason it was pregnant with beneficial
influences for the culture of the Renaissance, no impartial student
of the period will deny. This zeal for freedom was doubtless attended
by excesses, as I have already admitted. But there are few products
of intellectual fermentation on a large scale which, even in their
noblest and most homogeneous maturity, do not share the bitter
flavour of the leaven which originally set in motion the inert mass.
If human instincts, in righting themselves after centuries of oppres-
sion, gave a sudden lurch in the opposite direction, their next impulse
was the likelier to be a self-steadying and moderate movement. Cer-
tainly the mere negative stand-point of the Decameron was no small
gain to the mental progress of Italy. It was necessary to brush off
the hypocrisies and sophistries of Rome, to expose fearlessly the
immoral results of its dogmatic development, to substitute for an
infallibility whose exercise manifested the most undoubted imbecility,
intellectual and moral, the jurisdiction of reason and common sense.
The lesson it taught Italy and Europe was the primary veracity of
the human conscience, as against all systems of dictation and extrane-
ous authority. Just as Descartes penetrated the alluvial strata of his
acquired knowledge until he came to the primary rock of consciousness,
so did Boccaccio strip off with scorn and contumely the figments and
falsities of mediaeval belief, and enjoined the Renaissance truth-seeker
to be satisfied only with the reality he had himself discovered to be
such. And as with the rights of man, so also with those of nature.
The Decameron vindicated them against the morbid asceticism, the
fanatical obscuranticism and other-worldliness, which at that time
was the only serious form in which Christianity was able to manifest
itself.

The subversive tendencies of the Decameron, in relation to dogma,
were soon recognized by the Church. And it is instructive to observe
that her fulminations were directed in the first instance not against
those Tales which were most grossly immoral, but against those which
assailed her own ungodly profits, e.g. Father Onion's relics. Besides
directing her thunders against Boccaccio's work, she employed the
more subtle plan of purging it of all its anti-clerical errors, 1 thus
treating it as she did the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, or as the
Tractarian party in the English Church did the Pilgrim's Progress
when they endeavoured to de-Puritanize it. The attempt, as may be

1 On this ridiculous attempt, see Manni, Storia del Decam. Part iii. chap. x.
Tiraboschi Storia, vii. p. 2806, andcomp. Dr. Landau's interesting chapter (viii.)
of his Giovanni Boccaccio, p. 128, ' Das Decameron und seine Schicksale.'

General Causes and Leaders. 143

imagined, was unsuccessful. Gradually, but not so quickly as Boc-
caccio's Latin writings, the fame of the book became diffused through-
out Europe. Everywhere it was accepted as a worthy and character-
istic product of Renaissance Free-thought, by one of the leading
spirits of that movement, and it contributed much to disseminate and
sustain the principles which originally gave it birth.

There are some books of which it may be said, they are greater
than their authors. They represent a short-lived literary climacteric,
a tour de force of achievement— which having been gained is suc-
ceeded by a proportional relapse into what is apparently the more
normal condition of the writers. The Decameron is a work of this
kind. It represents the high-water mark of Boccaccio's literary career,
and is followed by an immediate and rapid subsidence of the flood-
tide of his Free-thought.

Boccaccio's first love, as we know, was Latin literature. He seems
to have shared the prejudice of Petrarca — engendered by classical
enthusiasm — that literary productions, to be permanent, must be writ-
ten in Latin ; 1 and just as his friend based his hopes of fame on his
tedious epic of Africa, and regarded the Rime as literary trifling,
so Boccaccio forsook the vein of gold he had struck in the Decameron
and turned his attention to a compendium of classical antiquity, his
De Oenealogia Deorum. A change in this direction seems to have
set in shortly after the publication of the Decameron. How far it
may have been suggested by the clamours evoked by that work we
have no means of knowing, but it was accelerated and confirmed by
the event which is called his Conversion. Some time about the middle
or end of 1361, a Carthusian monk, Ciani, waited upon Boccaccio, repre-
senting himself as sent by a brother Carthusian (Petroni) who had died
in the odour of sanctity in May of that year, to Boccaccio as well as
to other free-thinkers, in order to reproach them with their evil lives
and to lead them back into the right way. Petroni had objected
especially to Boccaccio, that he had perverted the talents God had
given him, and led men astray by his corrupt writings, which were
veritable l tools of the Devil.' Ciani adjured our free-thinker, in the
name of the sainted Peter aforesaid, to abandon his evil courses, re-
linquish his pernicious poetry, and to employ himself with worthier
studies. In the event of his neglecting the warning he threatened

1 In this particular Dante was more prescient than either Petrarca or Boc-
caccio. He changed his intention of writing the Divina Commoedia in Latin,
because he foresaw that a poem written in Tuscan was more likely to be popu-
lar, and hence to confer immortality, than one written in Latin, * Che se volgare
fosse/ says Boccaccio, * il suo poema egli piacerebbe, dove in Latino sarebbe
schifato.' 4 Comento Sopra Dante,' Op. Volg n x. p. 28.

144 The Skeptics oj the Italian Renaissance.

him with a speedy death and with the pains of hell. It was a curious
Nemesis that made the author of the Decameron the object of atten-
tions which he had himself so unsparingly ridiculed, and which, none
knew better than he, were prompted either by self-interest or blind
fanaticism. Unluckily the monk caught the great enemy of his order
in a weak moment. Incredible as it may seem, Boccaccio believed
Ciani's story, together with certain supernatural revelations employed
to confirm it. He resolved, in order to avert the fate in store for him,
to reform his course of life, to give up his poetry and belles lettres,
and to sell his treasured books. Never was the triumph of supersti-
tion over genius more complete. Happily he informed Petrarca of
his design in a letter which no longer exists, and his friend replied
in a well known Epistle, which is a model of dry humour and caustic
sarcasm. 1 He represents himself as being shocked on hearing from
Boccaccio the news of his approaching death, but his apprehensions
were dispelled on a careful perusal of his letter. The prognostica-
tion of a pious monk founded upon a divine revelation, he ironically
admits, would be a serious matter — provided it were true. But how
often are lies and deceits disseminated under the garb of religion,
how often is not the name of God misused to betray mankind. All
men indeed are mortal, and are certain of not a single moment of life.
But Boccaccio has an advantage over other mortals, for his prophet
has warned him of a fate which is not imminent, but approaching, and
has allowed him time for repentance. Petrarca, as we know, was not
insensible to the worth of religious emotion and duty ; but he cordi-
ally detested the monkish perversion which made religion synonymous
with ignorance and fanaticism. He assures Boccaccio that the coun-
sel to forsake his poetry and his studies could only have emanated
from illiterate and ill-minded men. He adds that he will buy his
books if he determines to sell them. It is gratifying to find that the
Epistle of his l venerable master,' as he often styles Petrarca, pro-
duced some good effect on Boccaccio. His apprehensions of a speedy
death, etc., were allayed. He determined to continue his studies, and
not to sell his books. But Ciani's mission was not destined to be
fruitless. Dr. Landau has observed that after the year 1361 there is
a decided change, and unhappily for the worse, in Boccaccio's style.
No longer has it the freedom, vivacity and point of the Decameron.
Whether from ill-health or religious terrorism, it becomes dull, lifeless
and insipid. He thinks it needful also to bestrew his later works
with scraps of ecclesiastical dogma, in order to reassure his friends
of his orthodoxy. But the most paradoxical effect of Boccaccio's con-

1 Her. Senil., lib. i. ep. iv. Op. om., vol. ii. p. 740.

General Causes and Leaders. 145

version is that he becomes a collector of religions relics — a disciple
of and dealer with men like Father Onion whom he lashes so unmerci-
fully in the Decameron. It is only by remembering the peculiar
union of skepticism and superstition characteristic of his time, that
we are able to account for a taste so singular, in the case of an en-
lightened and scholarly thinker like Boccaccio. It is said that when
he died he had accumulated a large collection of these curiosities. We
are not told what they were, and have therefore no means of knowing
whether they were all as genuine as c il dito dello Spirito Santo cosl
intero e saldo come fu mai,' or ' uno de dente della santa Croce, e in
una ampolletta alquanto del suono delle campane del tempio di Sala-
mone.' l

There is little in the remainder of Boccaccio's life calculated to
throw much light on his Free-thought. His energies are now
directed to popularizing classical knowledge. Besides the De Genea-
logia Deorum, he published De Claris mvlieribus Y and De casibus
virorum iUustrium, works which were of standard authority not only
in Italy, but in the greater part of Europe during the fifteenth
century. 3 By these labours he helped to diffuse an acquaintance with
heathen antiquity, and ipso facto contributed to advance the cause of
the Renaissance.

During the latter years of his life Boccaccio's learning, and his well
known affection for Dante, received a gratifying recognition by his
appointment in 1373 to deliver at Florence a course of public lectures
on the Divina Commcedia. He is thus the first Professor of Dante in
Europe. The result of that appointment is his well known Comento
sopra Dante, which we may take as representing the last stage of his
intellectual course, and his final attitude in relation to Free-thought.
As might be supposed, he has no word of condemnation for the Inferno
from the point of view of the injustice or repulsiveness of the idea.
He sees nothing to animadvert, or even question, in the endless and
excruciating torments of non-Christians. He is particularly zealous
in defending Dante's orthodoxy, and no less solicitous in demonstra-
ting his own. But there are still traces in his commentary of the
free-thinking author of the Decameron. This tendency is especially
marked when the literary and moral excellences of the heathen is
contrasted with their supposed eternal destiny. Few estimates, e.g.
of Aristotle, Sokrates and the other denizens of the first circle of the

1 Decam. Giorn. Sest, Nov. x.

* Comp. Dr. Landau, Oiov. Boc, p. 211, and on the general subject of Boc-
caccio's Latin writings, see the Studj tulle Opere Latin* del Boccaccio, of Attilio
Hortis. (Trieste, 1879.)

VOL. L L

1 46 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Inferno could be more appreciative 1 than that of Boccaccio. He
also discusses fully the propriety, of punishing such noble examples
of humanity for errors of which they were not guilty consciously, if
at all. He is however inclined to believe that punishment can only
follow positive transgression; and that if the heathen are punished
eternally they must have rejected some such divine call as that indic-
ated by the Psalmist: 'There is no voice nor language, but their voices
are heard among them.' This discussion is closed by the words:
( Nondimeno che qui per me detto sia, io non intendo di derogare in
alcuno atto alia cattolica verita, ne alia sentenza di piu savii." 2 On
heresiarchs he is just as severe as Dante ; and his reasons for their
eternal torments are such as would justify the inquisitor in the un-
reserved application of his racks and thumb-screws, We may there-
fore, I think, sum up the last phase of Boccaccio's intellect as mani-
festing an oscillation between the intellectual independence of his
maturity and the superstition of his declining years. It is clear
to me that for no small portion of his Free-thought Boccaccio was
indebted to the influence of Petrarca. Without the support of
his master he would long since have fallen a prey to the machina-
tions of such fanatics as OianL But though devoid of the mental
strength of most of his compeers among Renaissance thinkers, Boc-
caccio was at heart a truth seeker. In the interests of truth and
freedom he opposed the corruptions of the Papacy — in fear of false-
hood and under a morbid self-distrust, perhaps engendered by infirm
health, he sought the shelter of that system whose manifold turpitudes-'
he had so convincingly exposed. But in both cases, in his skepticism
as in his belief; in his sitting at the feet of Petrarca and bowing his
head to the monkish tales of Ciani ; in his collection of classical manu-
scripts and his accumulation of ecclesiastical relics ; in the strength
and wisdom of the Decameron, and the weakness of the fatuity of
much of his later writings, Boccaccio's conscientiousness is indisput-
able. The course of true love, when truth itself is the object of pur-
suit, does not in every case run smooth, any more than it does in the
ordinary application of the proverb. Boccaccio must be estimated
by his intentions, rather than by actual results. Among his Canzone,
probably written about the time of the Decameron, there is a very
remarkable one, which Dr. Landau well characterizes as ' full of the
yearning of a great mind for the possession of the highest truth.' It
is an admission of doubt, and a prayer for enlightenment. It reveals
a distrust of self, and a dependence on the Eternal Reason that governs
the Universe. It breathes that tender wistful aspiration that dis-

1 Op. Volg. t x. pp. 51, 294, etc. » Op. Vcig., x. p. 849.

General Causes and Leaders. 147

tinguishes so many of the Renaissance Free-thinkers. The poem thus
unites in one point of view the combined skepticism and piety which
were the governing principles of Boccaccio's character, and which
divided between them his life. With it accordingly I conclude my
sketch.

' O Glorious Monarch who dost rule the sky

With reason's changeless law ; who mortal mind

Alone canst scan, and how frail errors wind

In folds round human thought dost well descry :

Come wing to me thy flight, if humble sigh
Displease thee not. All earthly passions blind
From me remove. Thy wings unto me bind
That I may soar to truths that cannot die.

* Take from my dimm&d eyes that blinding veil
Which lets me not perceive my devious way,
From false serenity give me release.
Chase from my breast the frosts which there prevail
And so enkindle it with thy warm ray
That I at last may reach to thy true Peace.' 1

_ . . _. . Every great period of intellectual fermentation will
^^ * necessarily be marked by violent contrasts and dispa-

rities. Principles, feelings, beliefs, customs and interests, not only
diverse from but antagonistic to each other, present themselves in all _
kinds of quaint juxtaposition, and connexion. This motley tout ensemble V f
affords to the keen-eyed satirical observer, who takes up a standpoint
of skeptical indifference in relation to it, rare opportunities for the in-
dulgence of humorous and ironical comment. He takes a grim pleasure
in watching the preposterous marriages and grotesque companionships
which only the Goddess of Discord herself could have planned. He
delights in exposing and exaggerating the weak, strange or comical
aspects of grave institutions and pretentious beliefs. This is the
position of Pulci in relation to the Renaissance. He represents its
humorous and satirical aspect, just as Dante does its mediaeval,
Petrarca its classical and humanistic, and Boccaccio its popular and
literary sides. I have already termed him the Rabelais of the
movement; he is also its Cervantes. Don Quixote's burlesque of
knight errantry finds an easily recognizable parallel in Pulci's
giant Morgante, and the mockery implied in his adventures, of
the opinions and customs of chivalrous times. Perhaps Sancho
Panza even has his counterpart in Pulci's creation of Margutte. At

1 Rime xlix., Op. Vdlg., xvi p. 71.

148 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

any rate, Pulci's great work, the Morgante Maggiore, may fairly be
described as a serio-comic representation of the Renaissance, with all
its manifold activities and heterogeneous products. Here we have
depicted its piety and its buffoonery, its superstition and its skeptic-
ism, its philosophy and its frivolity, its jest and its earnest. It is
natural to compare the work with the Decameron. They are com-
panion pictures, representing the same epoch — like a landscape
painted from two different standpoints. Boccaccio has re-cast and re-
clothed the popular tales of the Renaissance. Pulci does the same
for its ballads and romantic poetry. But whereas Boccaccio's narra-
tive is simple and direct, and his opinions not difficult of determina-
tion, it is almost as hard to define Pulci's real sentiments as it is
Rabelais', and for similar reasons. He regards the time, with its
weightest concerns, beliefs and opinions, as subjects of mockery and
raillery. His audience, moreover, differed considerably from Boc-
caccio's. The latter was a popular novelist, whose stories were read
and enjoyed by every section of society. Pulci was the favoured
^ Poet Laureate — as he might be styled — of Lorenzo di Medici and his
magnificent Court. As to the comparative extent of their Free-

t thought, there can be little doubt that Pulci is the greater skeptic ;
though he also has a vein of devotional feeling underlying his seeming
profanity. The similarities between the two champions of mental
freedom will appear when we have investigated Pulci further.

In order to this, we must obtain some distinct idea of the only
great work associated with his name — Morgante Maggiore — Morgante
the Great. This work is chiefly taken up with the adventures of
Orlando, the celebrated Paladin of Charlemagne's Court, and the
hero of so much romantic poetry, Italian and other. But its chief
interest is concentrated on a Giant Morgante, who is converted by
Orlando, and becomes his Esquire. The addition to his name of
' Great ' is probably a sarcasm on Charlemagne himself, who is here
depicted as a weak-minded prince. With the adventures of Orlando,
and his brother Paladins, of Morgante and some other giants, the
intrigues of Charlemagne's court, ending with the famous battle of
Roncesvalles, the whole poem is taken up. We need not follow these
adventures, which are sometimes grotesque and generally wearisome.
For our object it will suffice to catch the peculiar mocking and
libertine humour of the author, and the bantering ridicule with
which he treats all human opinions and hobbies, not even excepting
Skepticism itself.

The first point claiming our attention is the introduction of solemn
religious invocations in the first lines of each book, a significant
mannerism which has been copied by Voltaire in La PuceUe. Thus

General Causes and Leaders. 149

he begins the 1st Canto with the first two verses of St. John's
Gospel, the 4th with the Gloria in Excelsis, the 6th with the address
in the Lord's Prayer, the 10th with the commencement of the Te
Denm. In other cantos, also, he addresses, in apparently a half
serious half profane manner, the persons of the Trinity, terming Jesus
Christ in one place, —

' O Sommo Glove per noi crocifisso,' '

While he styles the Virgin, who is the favourite object of his
worship, — **

* figlia madre e sposa
Di quel Signor.'

This peculiarity is no doubt to be partly explained by the strange
medley of Christian and Pagan ideas current at that time, and
which we have seen abundantly exemplified in other cases. But
in the case of Pulci this feature seems to mean more. It indicates
a contemptuous disregard of mere religious phraseology. It betrays >
the cordial detestation of Cant which is one of his distinguishing }
attributes. It evinces an inclination to sport with topics perhaps
held in undue and superstitious reverence, in order to reduce them to
a human level. Leigh Hunt 8 has referred this characteristic to the
impartiality of a thorough jester, who permits no exemption from his
not ill-intentioned banter ; and he very ingeniously illustrates Pulci's
religious commencements, with their frequently profane continuations,
by a solemn ' grace before meat,' preceded and followed by secular,
perhaps frivolous discussion. For our purpose it is one manifestation
among many others of Pulci's free-spokenness, as well as an indirect
illustration of his joyous large-hearted humanity, which was jealous
of all entities, opinions, creeds, and even words which threatened to
repress or coerce it to seriousness.

The tone of the book is shown in the first Canto, in which Orlando
discovers and converts Morgante. The gigantic Saracen is one of
three brothers ; and they are introduced as blockading, by slinging
stones at, a certain abbey, governed by a holy and simple abbot, who
turns out to be a relation of Orlando. When the Paladin arrives
at the abbey he knocks at the gate, but for a time cannot obtain
admission. At last the abbot appears, and apologises for the delay
by the confusion into which the abbey has been thrown by the

1 It should however be borne in mind that the first person of the Trinity is
occasionally styled ' Jove ' by some of our early English dramatists. Comp.
e.g. Dyce's note in his edition of Mar low's works, p. 80.

* Stories from, the Italian Poets, vol. i. p. 298.

1 50 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

perpetual attacks of the giants. ' Our ancient fathers in the church/
he says, ' were rewarded for their holy service, for if they served
God well they were also well paid. Don't suppose that they lived
altogether upon locusts. It is certain that manna rained upon them
from heaven ; but here one is regaled with stones, which the giants
rain on us from the mountain, — these are our tid-bits and relishes.
The fiercest of the three, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great
trees by the roots and casts them on us.' l While they were thus
talking in the cemetery there came a stone as if it would break the
back of the Paladin's horse. On which the abbot exclaims, ' For
God's sake, come in, Cavalier, the manna is falling.' Orlando under-
takes to encounter the giants. After vanquishing and slaying two
of them, he is about to attack Morgante, the surviving brother, when
he immediately yields himself to the Christian knight, and announces
his intention of becoming a Christian. The reason of this sudden
conversion is characteristic of Pulci. Morgante confesses that he
has had a strange vision, in which he seemed assailed by a serpent.
' I called,' he says, ( upon Mahomet in vain, then I called upon your
God who was crucified, and he helped me, and I was delivered from
the serpent, so I am ready to become a Christian.' The poem
abounds with examples of conversion no less spasmodic and irrational;
and it seems impossible to deny that they were intended as satires on
the cheap and easy transmutation of Pagans into Christians, of
which the latter, both warriors and ecclesiastics, were wont to boast.
Morgante not only embraces the Christian faith, he is ready to ex-
emplify its humility by asking pardon of the monks whose abbey he
had previously attacked. He also resolves to follow Orlando until
death. Before proceeding on their adventures, Orlando talks with
Morgante of his slain brothers, and does not disguise his opinion that
they are gone to hell. He however consoles Morgante with the
promise of eternal felicity in heaven. ' The doctors of our Church,'
continued he (I here quote Leigh Hunt's translation 2 ), 'are all
agreed that if those who are glorified in heaven were to feel pity for
their miserable kindred who lie in such horrible confusion in hell,
their beatitude would come to nothing; and this you see would
plainly be unjust on the part of God. But such is the firmness of
their faith that what appears good to him appears good to them. Do
what He may they hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible
for Him to err, so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering
everlasting punishment it does not disturb them an atom.'

1 Canto I., Str. 25, 26. Comp. Leigh Hunt, Op. cit, i. p. 820.
• Stories, etc., i. p. 825.

General Causes and Leaders. 151

* Che quel che piace a Dio, sol piace a loro :
Questo s' osserva ne 1' eterno coro.' 1

Morgante cheerfully assents to Orlando's exposition of celestial
manners and sentiment. ' Few words for a wise man/ said Morgante.
4 You shall see if I grieve for my brethren, and whether or no I
submit to the will of God and behave myself like an angel. So,
Dust to dust, and now let us enjoy ourselves. I will cut off their
hands, all four of them, and take them to these holy monks, that they
may be sure they are dead, and not fear to go out alone into the
desert. They will then be certain also that the Lord has purified
me and taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom of
heaven.' * So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, and
left their bodies to the beasts and birds. No satire against the
inhuman theology of Dante on the one hand, and Calvin on the other
could be more justifiably severe, or more strongly marked. It is the\
powerful and eternal plea of the human affections against an/
assumed tyrannical government of the Universe. No argument
could demonstrate more conclusively how the ordinary conception
of hell-fire robs Deity of his love and heaven of its loveliness. No
proof could be more convincing of the essentially and unscrupuously
selfish character of much of the dogma of ecclesiastical Christianity.
Orlando and Morgante are in fact typical Christians by whom the
dictates of reason, the instincts of human affection are rigidly
subordinated to the arbitrary requirements of sacerdotal systems.
Christianity, or I should say its ecclesiastical counterfeit, has often
insisted, as here, on the dismemberment of our brethren in order to
establish our own orthodox faith.

In another remarkable passage a little further on, Pulci satirizes
still further the ruling ideas and subjects of Dante's Inferno.
Orlando and Morgante on their travels arrive at an enchanted castle,
where they find a vault with a tomb in it. Out of this proceeded a

1 Canto I., Str. 52. It is needless to point out the sarcasm of this interpre-
tation of ecclesiastical theology, or its influence as a source of much of the
immoral teaching of Bomanism. We may compare with it the reply of the
rustic, who being questioned as to the meaning of implicit child-like faith,
answered, * When my mother says a thing is so, I must believe it is so, if it
isn't so '—words which contain in a nutshell the whole theory of Bomanism.
* * E perche veggan la mia mente pura

A quel signer, che m' ha il suo regno aperto
£ tratto f uor di tenebra si oscura.
£ poi tagli6 le mani a 1 duo fratelli,
E lasciagli alle fiere, ed agli uccelli. — Canto I., Str. 54.
Comp. Leigh Hunt, Stories, etc, i. p. 827.

152 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

voice saying, ( You must encounter with me or stay here for ever.
Lift therefore the stone that covers me.'

* Do you hear that ? ' said Morgante. ' I'll have him out, if it's the
Devil himself. Perhaps it's two devils. Filthy-dog and Foul-mouth,
or Itching and Evil-tail, (names of devils in Dante).

' Have him out,' said Orlando, ' whoever he is, even were it as
many devils as were rained out of heaven into the centre.'

Morgante lifted up the stone, and out leaped a devil in the -likeness
of a dried-up dead body, black as a coal. Orlando seized him, and
the devil in return grappled with Orlando. Morgante was for joining
him, but the Paladin bade him keep back. It was a hard struggle,
and the devil grinned and laughed, till the giant, who was a master
of wrestling, could bear it no longer : so he doubled him up, and in
spite of all his efforts thrust him back into the tomb.

The devil however assures Orlando that Morgante's baptism, and
his own, and their deliverance, were events dependent on each other.
Accordingly, Orlando baptized the giant : whereupon with a mighty
noise, the enchanted house disappeared, and Orlando and Morgante
were free men.

The giant is so transported with his victory over this single devil
that he is inclined to attack the whole diabolical host of the Inferno.
' I could find it in my heart,' he said, ' to go down to these same
regions below, and make all the devils disappear in like manner.
Why shouldn't we do it? We'd set free all the poor souls there.
Egad, I'd cut off Minos's tail — I'd pull out Charon's beard by the
roots — make a sop of Phlegyas, and a sup of Phlegethon — unseat
Pluto — kill Cerberus and the Furies with a punch of the face a-piece
— and set Beelzebub scampering like a dromedary.' l

If we remember that these and similar passages were recited
before Lorenzo di Medicis, we shall have some some idea not only
of the freedom of that court in matters of ecclesiastical dogma, but
also of the skepticism of the cultured classes, in Florence and else-
where, with respect to the theology of Dante. Nor is this to be
attributed to the impatience of a libertine age with ideas of dis-
cipline and retribution. It was rather the repugnance of the
human conscience, when free-thought had strengthened its dictates
and promoted their independent expression — to a scheme of Divine
Providence which comprehended an Inferno like Dante's as part of
its plan. Pulci, we shall presently discover, had other and more
philosophical theories as to depopulating those Tartarian regions
which Dante's sombre imagination had so elaborately colonized.

1 This is Leigh Hunt's vivacious rendering of the passage. See his StoiHe$,
etc., i. p. 886.

General Causes and Leaders. 153

But there is a curious episode of the Morgante Maggiore which
especially concerns our subject of Renaissance Free-thought. In
the 18th Canto we are introduced to another giant, Margutte, who
seems intended by Puici to typify partly the Paganism, partly the
Skepticism of the period. Morgante, journeying to join his master,
suddenly falls in with this monster. He accosts him, ' What is
your name, traveller ? ' The other answered, ' My name is Margutte.
I intended to be a giant myself, but altered my mind you see and
stopped half-way, so that I am only twenty feet or so. 7 Morgante
then asks further, ( Are you Christian or Saracen ? Do you believe
in Christ or in Mahomet ? ' In reply, Margutte enounces that cynical
admission of unfaith, which the best writers on the Renaissance l
have accepted as the expression of its extreme Skepticism. ' To tell
you the truth,' he answered, —

4 In black I believe no more than in blue,
Boil'd or roasted, a capon I hold to be true ;
Sometimes too in butter I also believe,
And ale, when I cannot get must, I receive
(While the latter is best when most rough I conceive) ;
Above all I hold faith in sound and good wine,
And the man I deem saved whose belief is like mine.'

Proceeding with the enumeration of his Epicurean tenets he
continues, —

* 1 believe in a tart and a tartlet well done,
The one is the mother the other the son.
The real pater noster is a good fegatello,*
And these may be three, and two and but one,' etc., etc.

From the satirist's point of view this confession of faith is a not
unfair caricature of the excessive sensualism of Pulci's time. The
reckless disregard of all truth but what appealed to the animal
passions of mankind was not then induced by the demoralization
attending such fearful events as the Black Death, but was the fruit
of a one-sided and extreme Naturalism. The spirit of which the
Decameron is an outcome, and which Boccaccio put forward as the
main justification of the work, is pourtrayed in the Morgante

1 e.g. Bartholmess and Berti in their lives of Giordano Bruno, Prof. Villari
in his life of Macchiavelli, Settembrini in his Lezioni di Letteratura Italiana,
etc.

* This dainty which stood so high in Margutte's dietetic Pantheon consisted
of chopped liver made into a kind of sausage. In the West of England a
similar preparation is still called a ' faggot.'

154 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Maggiore, no doubt with some exaggeration, as the temper of Floren-
tine citizens at the very height of the commercial greatness of their
city. The picture is not, nor was it intended to be, attractive. Pulci
does not spare Skepticism, any more than he does other diverse forms
of earnest conviction. But Margutte, sensual and brutish as he is, is
not left without some redeeming trait. With all the vices which he
discloses with such extravagant candour, 1 he still possesses one
r virtue; and that in Pulci 's estimation of no little importance. He
had never betrayed a comrade. 2 He thus evidences some sense of
honour, brotherhood and fidelity. We cannot help being reminded,
in the enumeration of Margutte's vices thus qualified by this solitary
virtue of a capacity for friendship, that Morgante's good qualities,
his sudden conversion, his docile temper, his ready humility were
accompanied by an unnatural and unpleasant absence of brotherly
feeling, for he showed no compunction in lopping off his brother's
hands as a pledge of his Christianity. I have often thought this
contrast intended by Pulci to represent the respective merits and
demerits of Paganism and Christianity, from his own standpoint
of general benevolence. Undoubtedly the tendency of much in
ecclesiastical Christianity was to make men selfish and indifferent
to the interests of others. On the other hand, there was much in
Paganism, or Mahometanism, to bind men together by ties of brother-
hood, community of thought, interests, etc. Morgan te regards his
brother giant's assertion that he had never transgressed the law of
friendship as a considerable set off against his general Skepticism ;
for otherwise as he believed in nothing, he should have compelled him
to believe in his bell-clapper — the weapon Morgante was carrying.
The two giants pursue their adventures together. Morgante however
continually banters and cheats his friend, especially in the matter
of eating and drinking. Margutte at last remonstrates. ' I reverence
you,' he says, ' in other matters, but in eating you really don't behave
well. He who deprives me of my share at meals is no friend. At
every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to lose an eye. I am for
sharing everything to a nicety ; even if it be no better than a fig, a
chestnut, a rat, or a frog.' s Morgante answers, ' You are a fine
fellow, you gain upon me very .much. You are " II maestro die color
che sanno." ' This application of Dante's description of Aristotle to
the typical but caricatured Skepticism of his own time affords a

1 Canto xviii., Str. 119-142.
• ( Salvo che questo alia fine udirai,
Che tradimento ignun non feci mai. 1

Canto xviii., Str. 142.
3 Canto xviii., Str. 19a

General Causes and Leaders. 155

good illustration of Pulci's grotesque humour. Certainly it was
not Aristotle nor any system of definite knowledge, that could in
Pulci's own circle claim a ' mastership.' ' Those who knew ' were
for the most past eager to disclaim all knowledge of a positive kind,
and many of them, in the spirit of Margutte, confined all their
thoughts and aspirations to mundane enjoyments. Pulci's burlesque
rendering of Dante's serious phrase gives also a measure of the
progress of the Renaissance during the last two centuries. TheV
classical ism of the thirteenth had given way to the complete n
intellectual independence of the fifteenth century; and the progressive /
emancipation was accompanied by a humorous estimate of the chief
agencies that co-operated in its production.

Another feature of Pulci's immediate environment, and of the Italy
of the fourteenth century, is illustrated by Margutte's death. This is
in complete harmony with the recklessness of his life. He literally
explodes in a fit of inextinguishable laughter on witnessing the
grimaces of a monkey who had found his boots and was pulling them
on and off. 1 He is thus an apt symbol of the perpetual irrepressible
ridicule which a sensual age and a one-sided culture bestowed on all
topics alike. 8 The lesson is emphasized by Margutte's destiny :

4 Ei ride ancora, e ridera in eterna.'

Pulci himself is, in this respect, an admirable exponent of the Age
and of its jesting temper. There are few crazes or enthusiasms of
Florence under Lorenzo of which he does not present the ' seamy
side.' He ridicules e.g. the Academy instituted by Lorenzo for the
cultivation of the Greek language. With the appreciation of indi-
vidual liberty which is the primary necessity of every free-thinker,
together with the somewhat distinct quality best described as Bohe-
mianism, Pulci holds aloof from that and every other institution
which might have had the effect of conventionalizing himself or his
wayward literary moods. His own Academe and Gymnasia — the
source and guide of his poetic inspiration — were wild woods and
secluded bosky dells. 8 He sneers also at the pedantry and exclu-
siveness which attended the revival of Greek Literature, and the
over-acted enthusiasm of the Florentine Platonists — the chief literary
Cants of his age. Nor is he a whit more merciful to the learned dis-
cussions of university professors and popular teachers, especially

1 Canto xix., Str. 147-149.

* ' Oh questi,' says Settembrini, * questi & veramente 1' uomo di quel seoolo, &
V Italiano che ride di tutto, che perdera tutto, anche la liberta, e morira
ridendo come Margutte. 1 — Lezioni di Lett. Itcd., i. p. 880.

8 Comp. Morgante, Canto xxv., Str. 116-117.

156 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

when their themes appeared impractical and insoluble. When e.g.
the whole of Italy was agitated by the controversy on Immortality,
originally provoked by Pomponazzi's work on the subject, Pulci's cha-
racteristic contribution to the discussion consisted of a burlesque ode
on some of the theories mooted, which equals in irreverence anything
to be found in Rabelais. 1 But with all his contemptuous indifference
for serious topics, and his irrepressible desire to prick with the keen
point of raillery some of the inflated and gaseous bladders which in
that as in every other age would willingly pass themselves off as
solid bodies, Pulci was by no means a thoughtless man. His uni-
versal jest was not the outcome of mental vacuity, but the instinctive
reflex action of primary ingredients in his creed. In the first place
all his convictions of Deity, of Nature, of Man were optimistic. The
next thought of his theology is found in the definition of Ghod with
which he commences the sixth Canto of the Morgante —

* O Padre nostro che ne' cieli stai
Non circumscritto,* ma per piu amore
Ch' a' primi effeti di lassu tu hai' —

a definition which however incomplete, is more in harmony with the
teachings of Christianity, as well as with the prime instincts of
humanity than Dante's Creator of the Inferno. His scheme of Re-
demption contemplates the salvation of the whole human race, a
theory which he places on the broad grounds of divine justice ; and
his charity, like that of Origen, embraces, as a possible contingency,
* the ultimate salvability of the fallen angels. But it is part of Pulci's
humour that his most cherished opinions are frequently placed in the
mouth of the most incongruous of his characters. His own Skepti-
cism, and that of his age — the brilliant and aesthetic Epicureanism
of the court of Lorenzo — is typified by the sensuous creed of a gigan-
tic Caliban, who occupies the debateable territory between man and
brute. A grave discussion on free will takes place between an en-
chanter and a devil with, it must be averred, as much reasonableness
and anti-diabolical judgment as could have been expected from two
philosophers. A debate on Christian doctrine takes place, under cir-

1 See this sonnet in Prof. Fiorentino's Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 154. It is
translated and commented on in M. Albert Castelnau's Let Medici* , vol. i.
p. 429.

• Comp. Dante : — Par., Canto xiv.

' Quell 1 uno, e due, e tre, che sempre vive
Non circonscritto, e tutto circonscrive. 1

The contrast between the elder poet's attention to dogmatic formulae, and
Pulci's stress upon human instincts is instructive.

General Causes and Leaders. 157

cumstances hardly suggestive of reverence between a Christian knight
and his Saracen mistress ; while his best exponent of theology is a
thoughtful, mild, and philosophic devil. This last character, Ash-
taroth, seems to me one of the most interesting, albeit diabolical, in
the whole gallery of the Morgante. In an argument with the en-
chanter Malgigi, he lays down distinctly the subordination of the Son
to the Father in the doctrine of the Trinity. His reason being :—

1 Colui che tutto fe, sa il tutto solo,
E non sa ogni cosa il suo figliuolo.' l

The enchanter, like some popular divines in the English Church, is
scandalized at an interpretation of the doctrine, which is indubitably
that of the earliest Church, whereupon this most orthodox and scrip-
tural of devils : —

' Disse Astarotte tu non hai ben letto
La Bibbia, e par mi con essa poco uso
Che, interrogate del gran di il figliuolo
Disse che il Padre lo sapeva solo.' '

Ashtaroth has the task imposed on him of conveying one of Charle-
magne's Paladins (Rinaldo) from Egypt ; to take part in the great
battle of Roncesvalles. He does this by taking possession of his
horse which thereupon soars through the air with him in a straight
line towards the valley of Roncesvalles. On their way the wise devil
instructs Rinaldo in different subjects of religion, philosophy, and
physical science. Passing e.g. the Pillars of Herakles, he ridiculed
the notion that nothing was to be found beyond them, ' for ' said he,
1 the earth is round and the sea has an even surface all over it ; and
there are nations on the other side of the globe who walk with their
feet opposed to yours, and worship other gods than the Christians, as
e.g. the Sun and Jupiter and Mars.'

It is difficult to find, in any time prior to Columbus, a more distinct
assertion of the existence of the Antipodes. The effect of the com-
munication upon Rinaldo is to awaken curiosity respecting the salva-
bility of races so far removed from the limits of Christendom. He
immediately asks if these can be saved ? The answer of the humane
Ashtaroth is instructive and might advantageously be laid to heart by
the bulk of Christian teachers, whether Catholic or Protestant. ' Do
you take the Redeemer for a partizan, and imagine he died for you
only ? Be assured he died for the whole world, Antipodes and all.
Perhaps not one soul will be left out of the pale of salvation at last ;

1 Canto xxv., Str. 186. * Canto xxv., Str. 141.

8 Canto xxv., Str. 229-281.

158 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

but the whole human race will adore the truth, and find mercy. The
Christian is the only true religion ; but heaven accepts all goodness
that believes honestly, whatsoever the belief may be.' * If, as seems
certain, we are at liberty to take these words as an epitome of Pulci's
speed, we may I think credit him, notwithstanding his raillery, with
//possessing a far corrector notion of the mission of Christianity and its
// relation to humanity than he could have derived from the decrees of
Ecclesiastical Councils and the writings of the Fathers. Nor is his
ascription of such humane and genuinely Christian sentiment to a
devil so incongruous as at first sight it might seem. Indeed Pulci
appears to me to have invested his conception of Ashtaroth with more
vraisemblance than any of the great creators of dramatic and poetic
devils, e.g. Dante, Milton and Goethe, for he has allowed the existence
not only in intellect, but in feeling, of some relics of those celestial
sentiments that animated them in their pre-f alien condition. Ash-
taroth's own plea for the retention of feelings so anti-diabolical is
pathetic and would have strongly moved the compassionate heart of
Sterne's Uncle Toby. ' Do not suppose ' he says * that nobleness of
spirit is lost among us denizens of the nether regions. You know
what the proverb says, There's never a fruit however degenerate but
will taste of its stock. I was of a different order of beings once and
. . . but it is as well not to talk of happy times.' * Rinaldo parts

1 Canto xxv., Str. 233 and 284 :— Comp. also Str. 285 and 236.

1 Dunque sarebbe partigiano stato
In questa parte il vostro JEtedentore
Che Adam per voi quassu f ossi formato
£ crucifisso lui per voetro amore :
Sappi ch' ognun per la Croce e salvato ;
Forse ehe '1 vero dopo lungo errore
Adorerete tutti di concordia
£ troverrete ognun misericordia.

' Basta che sol la vostra Fede e oerta
£ la Vergine e in Ciel glorificata ;
Ma nota che la porta e sempre aperta,
£ insino a quel gran di non fia serrata
£ chi fara ool cor giusta V offerta,
Sara questa olocausta acoettata
Che molto piace al Ciel la obbedienzia,
£ timore, osservanzia e reverenzia.
* Canto xxvi., Str. 88.

( Non creder, nello inferno anche fra noi
Gentilezza non sia ; sai che si dice,
Che in qualche modo, un proverbio fra voi,
Serba ogni pianta della sua radice,
Benohe sia tralignato il frutto poi ; —
Or non parliam qui del tempo felioe.'

General Causes and Leaders. 159

from his (nominally) infernal mentor with every expression of good
will. It seems as if he were parting from a brother ; he is convinced
that ' Gentilezza, amicizia, e cortesia ' are not unknown among devils ;
and he promises to pray that not only Ashtaroth, but every other
member of the Satanic legions may repent and obtain the divine
pardon, 1

These glimpses are sufficient to reveal the kindly tolerant freedom
which underlies so much of what seems whimsical and bizarre in
Pulci's thought. His true character can indeed only be arrived at
by placing the flowers of his wit, the aromatic and bitter herbs of
his jest and satire, in the alembic of critical and scrutinizing re-
search and thus distilling their fragrant spirit. An inveterate foe of
everything like cant and pretension, Pulci takes pleasure, as did
Rabelais, in veiling under grotesque symbols and hiding in obscure
and improbable corners his own genuine sentiments. Perhaps it was
not only his humoristic standpoint, but a genuine insight into the
time, that impelled him to dress up truth in motley, as if he had
thought that her own naked loveliness was more than the ignorant
prudery and purblind vision of men would bear — but not the less
lovingly* does he regard her in the quaint and fanciful costumes with
which his sportive tenderness has invested her. As regards the cur-
rent beliefs of his time, Pulci is a skeptic. For the ordinary dog-
mata of the Romish Church, especially when sombre, inhuman, ascetic,
and sordidly selfish ; or else elaborately speculative and unpractical,
he had scant respect. On the other hand he is taken with those
aspects of it which appear kindly, gentle and humane, or else beauti-
ful and artistic. That he appreciated simplicity in religious service
is shown by the advice of Archbishop Turpin to the dying Orlando.
For when the great Paladin was about to utter a formal confession of
faith previous to receiving absolution, Turpin prevents him by say-
ing ' A single Pater Noster or Miserere, or if you will a Peccavi is
enough.' His chief conception of Deity, as we have seen, is illimit-
able love; and this single idea is of itself sufficient to dispel sacerdotal
terrorism, and make the Inferno of Dante and the Church a figment
more insubstantial than the most shadowy of its suffering shades.
Love being his only notion of Deity, his sole idea of human duty cor-
respondingly resolves itself into benevolence. There is a kindliness
in his very banter, and a tenderness in his severest raillery, which

1 Canto xxvi., Str. 85 : —

1 E quel Signor, che la mia legge adora,
Prego, se '1 prego dovessi valere,
Chi vi perdoni, e che ciascun si penti,
Che ristorar nun vi poeso altrimenti.'

1 60 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

> render Pulci the most loveable among the great poets of the Renais-
sance. The editor of the Parnaso Italiano, speaking of this quality,
says * that the student of Italian literature will adore Ariosto and
admire Tasso but will love Pulci.' l How far he carried his jesting
Skepticism beyond the fair limits of religious cant and conventional
pretence it is not easy to say. If he carried it to the extreme excess
with which he is sometimes charged, we must remember that liber-
tinism, religious and ethical, was a characteristic both of his age and
of the society in which he moved. The most irreligious among his
minor works are the sonnets in which he ridicules unsparingly the
clergy, ecclesiastical miracles, the methods and conclusions of meta-
physics, but even here Pulci is more anti-clerical than anti-Christian,
and it is only fair to accept, as a * set off ' against his sonnets, the
work which bears the name of his confessions, wherein he recanted
some of his freer opinions. That the author of the Morgante should
have suffered some inconvenience from the promulgation of his toler-
ant free-thinking opinions is only what we might have expected. He
died at the commencement of the reaction which set in about the
close of the fifteenth century against the Renaissance, and his body
was refused admission into consecrated ground ; but Pulci's fame as
the Father of Italian Romantic Poetry was not likely to suffer from
' such unworthy exhibitions of sacerdotal malignity.

I have chosen Machiavelli as the statesman of the
ve ' Renaissance to illustrate the combined effect of all
those influences, religious, humanistic, naturalistic, philosophical and
literary which characterize it. His name and writings will supply
us with an approximate answer to the following problem : Given a
period of Free-thought in which religious restraints have become
weakened, in which ancient sources of authority, political as well as
social, are impaired, in which literature has become libertine, in
which natural rights and instincts assert themselves in an imperious
and unregulated manner, in which individualism has acquired a
somewhat obtrusive character — what will be the aim and teaching of
a politician who is himself the creature of all these influences ; but
who, to maintain the solidarity of political and social institutions, is
compelled to react against them ? We are therefore adopting, both
with Machiavelli and Ouicciardini, a different standpoint from that
to which the literary leaders of the Renaissance have introduced us.
Our present attitude to the Italy of the fifteenth century is that of

1 Leigh Hunt, Stories, etc, i. p. 297, who adds, ' And all minds in which
lovingness produces love will agree with him. 1

General Causes and Leaders. 1 6 1

thoughtful statesmen, philosophical historians and practised diploma-
tists — men who apply the culture of their time to questions affecting
the organizations of nations, churches and societies, where free-
thought is not a mere individual peculiarity, but a principle under-
lying their policy, and colouring their conceptions of contemporary
history. The change is the same as that which the student of our
Elizabethan age experiences who turns from the study of Shake-
spere, and Ben Jonson to the pages of Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Machiavelli's life is interesting as being in an unusual degree the
practical embodiment of his writings. In its various vicissitudes, in
the way he encountered them, in the motives and principles which
regulated his action, and which he lays bare with cynical indifference,
may be read the vivified personification of the rules of human conduct
contained in his works. His life however we must pass over. As to
his character, its chief points will be brought out sufficiently for our
purpose, by considering his attitude : —

1. To the Renaissance and Pagandom.

2. To the Church and Christianity.

3. To Political Science.

4. To Skepticism.

i. Machiavelli is not ordinarily classed among the pure humanists J
of the Renaissance. This is partly because he belongs to the later
stages of the movement, and partly because his excessive reverence*
for antiquity obscured his perception of the real significance of its /
revival. He almost entirely ignores the literature of the Renais-
sance. Its foremost leaders, Petrarca and Boccaccio, are hardly
mentioned by him. The author whom he most prizes, as his Italian
master, is Dante ; though his imitations of him occasionally take the
form of burlesque. 1 He displays little or no interest in the scientific
progress, or the artistic revival, which marked the Italy of the six-
teenth century. He is indifferent to the great geographical discoveries
which then aroused the attention of Europe, and in which his friend
Guicciardini manifested such enthusiastic interest. On the other
hand he is a devout disciple of ancient thought, an impassioned ad-
mirer of every form of classical oulture. From the very commence- -\
ment of his education he read with zest every Latin author knowni C
to his contemporaries, and also studied the philosophers and his-| '
torians of Greece. His works are imitations, often servile, of what
he esteemed the best models of ancient literature. His comedies are
adaptations of those of Plautus and Terence. His comic and satiric
writings are based on Lucian and Apuleius. His histories are

1 As e.g. in his Asino d?oro.
VOL. I. M

162 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

modelled on Livy, Tacitus and Polybius, and his political science is
largely indebted to Greek and Roman history. Incidental quotations
occur in his writings even of the then less known classical authors,
("such as Pindar and Euripides. His mind is impregnated with Pagan
\ideas and opinions, just as his language is moulded by classical turns
of expression and grammatical forms. The Renaissance, for him, was
not the renewal of the old life, in the same manner as the child is the
offspring of its parent, combining sameness of type with difference
of individuality — the spirit of antiquity recast in the mould of the
modern world ; it was rather the veritable * resurrection of the dead '
— the actual resuscitation of ancient institutions, laws and modes of
thought. Machiavelli's worship of antiquity, for it was little else, is
instructively depicted in the oft quoted letter in which he describes
his daily pursuits when in exile. Writing from his rural retreat,
which was also his patrimony, he tells his friend Vettori how he is in
the habit of rising with the sun, and going into one of his plantations
which he is having cut down. There he remains two hours examin-
ing the work done on the evening before and amusing himself with
the woodmen, who have always a crow to pluck either among them-
selves or with their neighbours. Quitting the wood, he proceeds to
a fountain, and from thence to his paretajo, 1 with a book under his
arm, either Dante or Petrarca, or one of those poets called minor, as
Tibullus or Ovid. He there reads of their amorous passions and recalls
his own. After enjoying for a time these pleasant reveries, he next
wends his way to the roadside inn, and chats with the passers by,
asking the news of their several countries. Thereby he learns a
great number of things ; besides which he loves to observe the diver-
sity which exists in the tastes and ideas of men.

When the dinner hour arrives he sits down with his troop (his
wife and children), and eats those provisions which his poor farm
and wretched patrimony produces. Dinner over, he retires to the
inn, where commonly he finds the host, a butcher, a miller, and two
charcoal-burners. With these companions he peasantizes himself in
playing a game of cricca or tric-trac. Thence arise a thousand dis-
putes accompanied by angry words, so that their voices are heard as
far as San Gasciano. Employed in these ignoble occupations, Machia-
velli prevents his brain from getting mouldy. When evening comes
he returns to his house, he enters his study, but on the threshold ho
divests himself of his peasant clothes covered with mud and dirt,
and dons his official garments; and thus decently attired, he enters

1 A favourite pastime with the rural gentry of Tuscany. For a full ac-
count of it, see A. F. Artaud's Machiavd % vol. i., p. 254, n. 1.

)

General Causes and Leaders. 163

the ancient courts of the men of old. 1 Received by them with
affection he feasts himself on the nourishment they supply — the only
food which agrees with him and for which he is born. He does not
fear to speak with them, and (this is noteworthy) to demand the
reason of their actions. They, full of courtesy as they are, answer
his enquiries. Thus employed, he does not feel, even for four hour.*,
any ennui, he forgets every source of disturbance, he no longer fears
poverty, and death terrifies him not. He feels himself entirely
transported in their society; and as Dante says 2 there can be no
knowledge unless one retains what one has acquired, he is careful to
take notes of what is most remarkable in their conversation. . . .
I have quoted this passage at length because it not only throws a
light on the intensity of his passion for ancient literature, and his
method of studying it, but also affords us some glimpses into his per-
sonal character. At first sight we are naturally reminded of the
half-studious, half-desultory life of Montaigne. There is in both cases
the same relish for the conversation, tastes and amusements of
peasants, the same contempt for mere social distinction ; but in Ma-
chiavelli'8 case the philosophical serenity of which he boasts is only
half earnest. Montaigne voluntarily retired from the society of the
court, and political affairs, to the seclusion of his study and his rural
occupations ; Machiavelli's retirement, on the other hand, was alto- J
gether involuntary ; and he was miserable and restless so long as his /
enforced leisure lasted. Montaigne, in short, was a philosopher pure
and simple; Machiavelli a born diplomatist and politician, with
philosophical and literary tastes superinduced on that basis. Indeed
a phrase in the passage just quoted, in which he avows that his
researches into classical authors consisted of an investigation into )
human motives, is an incidental proof that Machiavelli's interest in/
antiquity was not wholly or even mainly that of the scholar—it was
rather that of the earnest student of men and social institutions.
The purport of this remark is amply attested by all his political and
historical works.* Everywhere there is manifested the same scope
and purpose — the supreme desire to watch those motive influences by
which men are governed, societies formed and consolidated, and
political power administered. Hence the field of heathen antiquity

1 * Povero Niccolo ! ' exclaims Professor Settembrini in reference to this trait,
' ti fanno an dare a studio come gl' Inglesi vanno a tavola in abito nero e.
cravatta bianca.' Lezioni di Lett. Ital., ii. 136 note.

1 Par<*d, Canto v. : —

' Apri la mente a quel ch' io ti paleso
E formalvi entro ; che non fa scienza,
Senza lo riteuere, avere inteso. 1

1 64 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Machiavelli employed as a collection of precedents and illustrations,
to be applied, so far as difference of circumstances permitted, to the
political events and persons of his own time. It was a garden of
simples whence he might cull those best adapted to the diseases and
emergencies of Italian states in the sixteenth century. ..As a conse-
quence of the excess of political over literary interest, in his classical as
well as his general studies, the culture of Machiavelli always partook
of a certain narrowness both of conception and sympathy. His hu-
manism was almost totally destitute of what I should call the Hellenic
elements of the Renaissance, i.e. the love of speculation for its own
sake, the cultivation of truth, wisdom, and in a word, intellectual
perfection, regarded as attributes of the individual rather than as the
qualities of a political unit, the artistic feeling for and perception of
beauty — which we find in the leading minds both of ancient Greece
and of the Italian Renaissance, as e.g. Petrarca and Boccaccio. The
only portion of Greek history for which Machiavelli seems to have felt
any enthusiasm was the short-lived glory of Athens ; though he was
too short-sighted to appreciate adequately the combination of political
freedom with high culture which was the distinguishing feature of
' that oasis in human history. But it was on ancient Rome, her
\ government, institutions and sovereignty, that Machiavelli lavished
his warmest admiration. For the conduct of her leading spirits,
whether Imperial or Republican, for the genius and strategy of her
successful generals, for the unequalled prudenoe and administrative
f talent of her foremost statesmen — in a word, for the combination of
I irresistible power and unscrupulous cunning which marked her
V history, he felt the profoundest reverence. It was the embodiment
in actual history of the political principles he himself advocated, as
being imperiously demanded by the exigences of his own time..
Regarded from this standpoint, the Renaissance was to Machiavelli -
' a political movement, er rather congeries of movements, all tending in
the same direction. The revival of ancient learning and of ancient
freedom of speculation were subordinated in his estimation to the
revivification of the maxims of statecraft, and rules of conduct, that
animated the leaders and influenced the people of Old Rome. The
ideal object of the excitation and stir in human thought, as conceived
in his own warm and patriotic imagination, was not indeed the
establishment of the Universal Holy Roman Empire of which Dante
and Petrarca dreamed. Machiavelli's acquaintance with politics was
of too practical a kind to permit the indulgence of such fantastic
aspirations. His more restrained fancy and larger experience were
confined to the expectation, or rather the dim hope, of witnessing the
/ formation and consolidation of a United Italy — the worthy peer of

v

General Causes and Leaders. 165

the best of existing European sovereignties. Unhappily this day-
dream of a genuine patriot was not destined to be realized for more
than three centuries after his death.

But although Machiavelli's interest in antiquity, and his classical
studies, were those of a politician, it would be wrong to assume that
his general character was uncoloured by the spirit of Pagandom ; on
the contrary, notwithstanding an overt profession of Christianity, his
conceptions both of theology and morality were largely leavened by
the opinions of the ancients. His Deity was only partially the God
of Christians — the sovereign of Olympus shares to an equal extent his
reverence. The general idea underlying the name is with him, as
with most Italian thinkers of his time, mixed up with conceptions of
chance, fortune, fate, etc. The virtues he admires, and which he
puts in the forefront of his political teachings, are almost exclusively
those of Roman Paganism— the attributes of human strength, cou-
rage and endurance, self-reliance and audacity, qualified in needful
conjuncture by treachery, cunning and duplicity. For the gentler
passive attributes pertaining to Christianity, Machiavelli cherished, \
as we shall find, an undisguised contempt ; though it is not easy to '
reconcile this feeling with his equally undoubted appreciation of
Christ's own teaching before it had been corrupted by ecclesias-
ticism. His principles were further those of Roman Paganism in
the respect that he was an unswerving worshipper of success, and
thought that the end justified the means. Of a similar kind was the
feature which he shared with all his skeptical contemporaries — I
mean the limitation of his thoughts, interests and aspirations to the .
present world. To a great extent also he is guilty of substituting /
earthly renown for the Christian doctrine of immortality. Other
aspects of his Paganism will meet us further on.

ii. Turning to Machiavelli's attitude to the Church, we may ob-
serve that it resembles his standpoint to Paganism in being alto-
gether political. He has no conception of, or at least no interest )
in, religioiTas a mode of philosophy or speculation. He is utterly
indifferent to any relation it may be supposed to have to abstract
truth. With him it is a mere question of practical utility and
political science. Considered from that standpoint his opinion of
Christianity, nay of every religion, is eminently favourable. He is
fully persuaded that no state can exist without the binding force )
of sacred and supernatural sanctions; and he is no less certainly
convinced that vice and irreligion entail the inevitable ruin of a
community. 1 These general principles he affirms again and again.

1 Di$c. y i. chap. 11 (Op., ii. p. 65). ' E come la osservanxa de lculto Divino 6
cagione della grandezza delle Republiche ; coal il dispregio di quello 6 cagione

1 66 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

But religion, to be perfect in his eyes, ought to have a directly
political purpose. Its interests, sanctions, deterrents ought to
be so directed as to produce a feeling of patriotism. It is because
Roman polytheism attained this object in a manner so admirable
that Machiavelli commends it, as his ideal of a politician's re-
ligion. False and idolatrous as it intrinsically was, it ministered
to the political aspirations and destiny of the people. It was inter-
mingled with every act and object of public life. By the sacred
motive-power it supplied men became disinterested patriots, zealous
statesmen, invincible generals and brave soldiers. It formed the
vitalizing principle of the whole community — the salt of public life.
The real founder of the Roman power was not Romulus, but Numa. 1
The former only gave it laws, the latter gave it a religion and worship.
The first taught his subjects war; the other, refinement, gentle-
ness and the arts of social life. The most illustrious of all rulers of
men have been those who knew how to combine the sacredness of
priestly functions with the material power of secular rule, as e.g.
Solon and Lycurgus. 2

In the sixteenth century there was only one ecclesiastical institu-
tion that could claim the position of the religion of Italy — the Papacy.
The relation of this spiritual power to the various Italian states, its
influence on the political and ethical principles of the people, were
subjects which were continually obtruded on the attention of
Machiavelli in his political and diplomatic career. The result of
this observation in his case, as in that of Guicciardini, was a profound
conviction of the baneful effects of Romanism regarded from a politi-
cal point of view. The Church, he maintains, had ruined Italy, and
grafted upon her people every kind of vice and turpitude. 8 Instead
of acting as its ostensible mission suggested, as a peace-making
coalescing agent, unifying the various states into which the country
was divided, it fostered their mutual jealousies, and stirred up intes-
tine warfare among them, in order to profit by their divisions. The
example of greed, selfishness and rapacity it thus promulgated sank
deeply into the character of the people; nor was the open con-
tempt for their religion on the part of the clergy a less powerful
source of incalculable mischief. The guardians of public and private
virtue had become in no respect better than open purveyors of vice.
The logical effect of some of the doctrines of Romanism in producing

della rovina di esse. 1 (The Edition of his collected works here referred to is
that of Milan, 1805, in 10 volumes.)

1 Discorsi, book i., chap. 11. * Discorri, book i., chap. 10.

8 Dicorti Liv., book i., ch. 12. Nourisson in his Machiavel has attempted to
reply to this indictment. See p. 257.

General Causes and Leaders. 167

a contempt for morality was a subject which Machiavelli had studied
both as a politician and a dramatist. Few more powerful repre-
sentations of the perverse casuistry by which the profligate cleric of
the sixteenth century was accustomed to justify his vices exist than
the characters of Brother Timothy in the ' Mandragora ' or Brother
Alberic in the ' anonymous Comedy,' both prototypes of Moliere's
Tartuffe.

That Machiavelli's contempt for Papal Christianity never passed
into an open rupture with the system, or even a denial of its main
teachings, is clear both from his writings and from the scenes that
took place around his deathbed. The speculative doctrines of
Romanism he did not so much contradict as ignore. They only came
within his scope as a student of humanity and social institutions; and
it was not easy to predicate the effect which the dogma, e.g. of the
Trinity, would have on a man's feelings, duties and aspirations re-
garded merely as a citizen. The pretended thaumaturgic powers of
the priesthood, ecclesiastical miracles, etc., he ridiculed, though he was
not, any more than Guicciardini, Benvenuto Cellini and other eminent
contemporaries, free from the imputation of superstition. But in
truth it was not to Christianity, but to its Papal development, that
Machiavelli was opposed. Like others among our free-thinkers, he
recognised the truth and power of the Gospel while he characteristic-
ally makes its main excellence political or social. These are his
words on the subject : — " La quale Religioue se ne' Principi della
Repubblica Cristiana si fusse mantenuta, secondo che dal datore d' essa
ne fu ordinato, sarrebbero gli Stati e le Ropubbliche Crist iane piu.
unite e piu felici assai ch' elle non sono." l Of course the prima
facie intention of these words is a transference to political states and
institutions of the fundamental law of Christian brotherhood ; but in
the case of Machiavelli they imply more than this. They evince an
accurate perception of other attributes of Christ's teaching. Like
other Republican legists, he saw that the individualism which lay at
the root of that teaching, and was implied in the immediate relation
of every man to God, was itself an invaluable guarantee for freedom
and political independence. Probably also he laid stress on the moral
purity of the Gospel ; for he was undoubtedly of opinion that virtue,
if it possessed no other good tendencies or results, was a valuable
means both of attaining and preserving liberty : it was therefore, like
religion, a useful political agent, and this was the highest function,
in Machiavelli's estimation, that any person or attribute could pos-
sess. Doubtless also Machiavelli, who was a true hero worshipper,
was impressed by the grandeur of Christ's personality — the wonder-

1 Dicorsi Lit:, i., ch. 12. Opere, vol. ii. p. 69.

1 68 7 he Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

ftil sway he exercised over the minds of men. Those who mani-
fested that faculty, by means of force or craft, he regarded with
reverence; and in his lucid interval. , he was not so utterly indifferent
to the superiority of spiritual or moral forces as to withhold the tribute
due to them when they proved the equals of physical power or
intellectual astuteness. His well known depreciation of Christianity
contrasted with Roman Paganism as laying too much stress upon
the passive virtues, refers in my opinion to its Papal development.
The Papacy had insisted on submissiveness and intellectual abnega-
gation in order to further her own sacerdotal pretensions and her

r selfish aggrandisement. Machiavelli was not opposed to humility
and gentleness as religious virtues, provided they were not carried to
a suicidal excess. This is shown by his eulogy of SS. Dominic and
Francis for having brought back Christianity to its primary form,
as well as by his opinion that the fundamentals of Christian teaching
should be interpreted in the direction of manly energy, not in that of
slavish idleness. 1 On the whole, while believing in the efficacy of
religion as a political instrument, and appreciating the merits of
original Christianity, Machiavelli was a disbeliever as to its later
developments. Perhaps we ought not to attach too much importance
even to his admiration of Christ's teaching. Any religionist who

~ could move men was certain of his deference. The terms e.g. in
which he speaks of Christ he applies also to Savonarola. The latter
too, wielded an enormous mastery over men to which Machiavelli did
willing homage. As to whether the eloquent friar of San Marco
was right or wrong he would offer no opinion. A mountebank, who
could stir and guide the vacillating mob of Forence as Savonarola
did would have been equally certain of Machiavelli's respect.

iii. But our chief concern with Machiavelli, as a skeptic, relates
j to his political principles. These were based, in his own case, as

/ they must be in every similar case, on his estimate of humanity and
^ [ social existence. As is well known, this is painfully derogatory and

* pessimistic. If be did not affirm, in the spirit of a writer of our
own times, that the world was tenanted by so many millions ' mostly
fools,' it was only because he conceived that there was among them

.' an equal proportion of knaves. The source whence he derived this
depreciatory estimate of his fellow-men had no relation, as in Calvin's

/■case, to theological dogma. His authorities were twofold — history

. and experience. On the one hand he studied the records of ancient
history, on the other he reflected, in his customary cold cynical

1 ' La Religione Cristiana avendoci nostra la verita e la vera via, deve inter-
pietarsi secoodo la virtu e non secondo 1' ozio.'

General Causes and Leaders. 169

manner, on the political affairs in which he had been mixed up both
as secretary and ambassador of the Florentine Republic. His
historical investigations did not induce Skepticism as to the veracity
of the records. He did not rise from the perusal of Tacitus, Polybius
and Livy with the healthy distrust of Dr. Johnson : * Our know-
ledge of history is confined to a few facts and dates —the colouring
being conjectural. 1 Still less did he concur in Horace Wapole's
emphatic verdict : * Tell me not of history, for that I know to be
false.' Machiavelli'8 inference was, practically, the far more mis-
chievous one. * Tell me not of humanity for that I know to be false.'
Throughout the whole of history the same melancholy phenomena
seemed to his morbid vision to present themselves with unvarying
sameness. Everywhere and always the weak were the prey of the
strong. The more powerful and astute the ruler, the greater the
sway he exercised. The same truth held good in war. It was a
question not of truth, justice and humanity, but altogether of
superiority of force and strategy. Providence to him, as to Napoleon,
was ever on the side of the strongest battalions. Nor were these
lessons of the past likely to lose their efficacy by a consideration of
the events of his own time. Out of the commotions and conflicts of
different Italian states one truth emerged with unmistakable dis-
tinctness ; and that was that the success of rulers stood in a direct
relation to the material force at their command, and the skill and
address by which that force was wielded. The result, as a matter
of course, was ethical and social skepticism of the most marked
kind — the enouncement of principles which have consigned the
name of Machiavelli to an Inferno which is likely to be as eternal
as literature itself. His work named the Prince is thus an exposi-
tion of his principles as a statesman and as a skeptic. 1 The ideal
Ruler therein depicted was an incongruous combination of lion and
fox. His subjects were either to be caressed or destroyed. The
relation posited between them was not altogether unlike that between
the wolf and the sheep. All notions of humanity, gentleness and
mutual sympathy were regarded, in relation to the object aimed, at
as little better than sentimentalism. The main exception was that
the ruler might employ kindness instead of coercion, and moral instead
of material persuasion, always provided that the latter methods were
found equally efficacious. The chief consideration for him was

1 The true significance of this work, both with respect to the author, and
to the political theories and history of modern Europe, has recently received
much new light from students of Machiavelli: see, especially, Villari's Life
and Times, Eng Trans., vol. ii. pp. 200-248; and Mr. Burd's new edition of
11 Principe, with Introductions by himself and Lord Acton.

1 70 Tlie Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

success, clear, certain, speedy and permanent — all the rest was matter
of detail and comparatively unimportant.

Attempts have been made by various apologists to defenu
Machiavelli's political Skepticism. Some have asserted that, like
Montaigne, he was actuated merely by a spirit of excessive candour ;
others that his intention was to describe what men were accustomed,
V as distinct from what they ought, to do. But a more recondite method
is that suggested by Rousseau, who transforms his maxims of un-
scrupulous tyranny into an ironical defence of liberty and republic-
anism. According to this theory his advice to the despot how to
coerce and enslave his subjects is really intended to show the patriot
the road to freedom. Unfortunately however the exhortations are
too direct, too precise, too unqualified and too frequent to allow of such
ingenious hypotheses. Besides, as Macaulay in his well known essay
has pointed out, obliquity of moral vision is a feature pertaining not to
one but to all his writings. The same writer adds, ' we doubt whether
it would be possible to find in all the many volumes of his composi-
tions a single expression indicating that dissimulation and treachery
(had ever struck him as being discreditable.' No, whatever reproba-
tion may attach to the fact, Machiavelli's recommendation of political
duplicity and tergiversation, of unscruplous and ruthless cruelty, is
as sincere as the counsel of a pious father-confessor to some weeping
penitent. There is even a conscious innocency in his inculcation of
the most flagrant breaches of trust, honour and fidelity, which, if it
cannot avail to sanction them, serves to prove the good faith of the
teacher. Nor is this surprising. Machiavelli's Prince is a genuine
and unexaggerated type of the rulers of his time. It has been said
.. that he derived its maxims, as an immediate source, from a contempla-
tion of the duplicity, cunning and remorseless treachery of Caesar
Borgia. It is truer, I think, to say that the policy he enunciated, and
Borgia practised, was derived from the scheming ambition and per-
fidious cruelty of the Church itself. I wonder no one has written an
apology for Caesar Borgia grounded on his ecclesiastical education
and surroundings. Certainly no treachery was ever planned by that
historical monstrosity, no duplicity practised, no crime perpetrated,
but had its counterpart in principles and acts sanctioned by the selfish
ambition of the Holy See. His own nefarious life, the lives of other
Italian princes, hardly less criminal, were only a transference to secular
politics of the mingled astuteness and cruelty which had received their
blasphemous beatification at the hands of the vicegerents of Christ.
Lying, duplicity, cruelty, cupidity had long been elevated to the
rank of theological virtues, and all that Borgia did, or Machiavelli
inculcated, was to pursue that policy in secular matters, to its logical

I

General Causes and Leaders. 171

outcome. Nor was this transference difficult. There was no such
distinction in the minds of Renaissance thinkers as would have made
the principles accepted in one inapplicable to the other. The temporal
Empire was held to be, in its foundation and design, as sacred as the
Papacy. This conning of his lesson from the precepts and example
of the Church explains the nature of the reception which his con-
temporaries awarded to Machiavelli's Prince. That which especially
arrested their attention in the work was not so much the character of
the teaching as the brutal cynicism with which it was avowed. That
cruelty and treachery might be legitimately used in inculcating
dogma, or for the aggrandisement of the Church, was a long accepted
dictum of Papal policy. That a similar policy was adapted to the
establishment of a despotism over the temporal interests of man had
been experimentally demonstrated by many Italian princes. But
neither the spiritual nor the secular ruler had ever cared to divulge,
in the form of overt propositions, their real mainsprings of action.
This was just what Machiavelli did. The measures which Pope and
Prince had adopted for the complete subjugation of their subjects —
all the hideous and intricate mechanism of unlimited despotisms — he
exposed to the open gaze of the world with almost the conscious
pride of a patentee who has discovered an useful labour- or life-saving
machine.

It was not therefore the novelty of Machiavelli's teaching that
arrested the attention and excited the indignation of contemporaries.
They were rather repelled by the audacious and cynical frankness with
which the Florentine secretary disclosed the principles and manners
of Italian potentates. For the first time dogmas and maxims of state
policy to which all Italians had long been taught to bow, wore
revealed in their true repulsive character. Machiavelli was the
unconscious Rabelais or Hogarth of his age, describing with an
incisive pen but deliberate volition, its manifold corruptions. No
doubt the mode in which he accomplished this throws some doubt on
his real character. All his critics are unanimous in pointing out the
contradictions of which he is the centre. Regarded as a man, not as )
a politician, he was an admirer of political and religious liberty. This '
has the twofold attestation of the testimony of his friends and his
writings. On the other hand, it is equally clear that he lent himself
to schemes of political ambition and tyranny, while his Prince is the J
vade mecum of the unscrupulous despot. This contradiction seems to
me solved by what I term his moral Skepticism. Machiavelli is a cold,
unimpassioned cynical spectator of the game of human existence. A
believer in the maxim ' Homo homini lupus/ he is not very solicitous
as to what portions of humanity are destined to be the devourers or

172 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

what the devoured. If communities, whether secular or ecclesiastical,
can extort liberty from their rulers, by all manner of means let them
do so. Abstractedly the condition of freedom is highest, and Re-
publics are better forms of government than the irresponsible caprices
of tyrants. On the other hand, if the ruler no matter with what
unprincipled astuteness or cruelty, can cajole, or coerce his subjects,
he must be an imbecile if he does not do so. Thus as Machiavelli's
religious deity is Chance or Fortune, so his political god is Power.
He is an advocate of ' the good old rule/

* The simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.'

This well-worn maxim comprises in fact the sum and substance of
his political philosophy.

iv. Machiavelli is therefore, as I have called him, a moral Skeptic.
As such he is closely related to Augustine and Calvin. Starting
from a political standpoint, he is also a believer in human depravity.
He who legislates for human societies ought, to use his candid and
generous rule, ' presupporre tutti gli uomini essere cattivi,' This is,
^indisputably, the basis of his own system. He is an utter disbeliever
in the existence and worth of virtue, self-sacriiice, humility, and of
other qualities which impart honour and dignity to humanity. For
him man is a compound of weakness, folly and knavery, intended by
Nature to be the dupe of the cunning, and the prey of the despotic
ruler. The regulative and restoratory power which Calvin finds in
supernatural grace, Machiavelli looks no higher for than the un-
principled astuteness and the pitiless tyranny of the political
governor. False and demoralizing as is the Calvinistic conception
of humanity, that of Machiavelli is much more so. If Calvin's
( disbelief in all inherent goodness or virtue tended to undermine the
V foundations of conscious human merit, responsibility and self respect,
he gave back a principle which, however exaggerated or one-sided,
served, in many cases, as a potent substitute for the impaired motives;
and had the advantage of making its proof consist in personal ex-
perience. Whereas Machiavelli — and the same remark applies to
Hobbes — after undermining all sources of human freedom and inde-
pendence, delivered man over to political power — a weak, helpless,
imbecile slave. The logical outcome of Machiavellianism may
therefore be defined as Skeptical Pessimism or Pessimistic Skepti-
cism. A world in which all model rulers were of the vulpo-leonine
type, in which men were either fools or knaves, in which physical
force and intellectual cunning are the chief cardinal virtues, in which

General Causes and Leaders. 173

there is no room for goodness, gentleness, love, patience, humility
— the disinterested and benevolent attributes of Christianity — had
certainly better never have existed, or having by some mischance
come into existence, the sooner it were again reabsorbed into its
primal uncreated nothingness, the better for all interests really worth
consideration. That this spirit of despair of humanity, this moody
contemplation of the universe as a kind of gambler's chance, is
deeply impressed upon the literature of the Renaissance, no student
of it will choose to deny. But the phenomenon does not appear t*A
me attributable, as the effect of a cause, to the intellectual activity /
and Free-thought of the period. It is rather social than philosophical ;
and may be ascribed to the undermining of all ethical and religious
principles on the part of the Church. Indirectly, also, it may be
regarded as another phase of the disappointment which appeared
then to await every department of human quest. Italian society
seemed to have despaired of virtue and moral perfection, as its philo-
sophy did of indubitable truth. At the same time we must bear in
mind that Machiavellian Skepticism— accompanied by its correlate,
an excessive display of the instincts of despotism — is by no means
an uncommon feature among eminent politicians. Whether it is
that they acquire their knowledge of human nature 'at home,' or that
a large experience of the motives, and guiding principles of mankind,
has a tendency, in persons whose intellectual perceptions are allowed
to over-ride their feelings, to engender a contemptuous estimate of
them, regarded as the pawns of the political chess-board, we need
not now ask. Could the latter be proved it would show — and
Machiavelli is a case in point — that enlarged research into men's
motives, ways and actions, induces social Skepticism, just as investi-
gation into their knowledge induces intellectual unbelief. Certainly
this is the marked characteristic of men like Cromwell, Frederick
the Great, Napoleon the First and Bismarck and other champions
of the gospel of success. Whatever the religious or intellectual
beliefs of these men, they distrust their own kind. They start on
their several missions with the foregone conclusions of human
weakness, venality and corruption. They are skeptics of the race.
Napoleon once said of politics, ' il n'a pas d'entrailles ' ; and Professor
Settembrini has well remarked, 1 apropos of Machiavelli's statecraft
the science maybe likened to the traditional form of cherubs, 'all
head and wings and no body; all brain and energy and no heart.' For
my part, I regard the Skepticism that takes away from humanity all
goodness and unselfishness, which undermines the mutual confidence

1 Lezioni di Letteratura Ital., vol. ii. p. 184.

fl

1 74 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

I that forms the connecting link of all social existence, as not only the
( most unsustainable in reason but the most demoralizing in practice.
i Disbelief in man, as an unit of social life, appears to me a far greater
offence than doubt of Deity, and misanthropy, in that sense, a more
mischievous principle than Atheism. The reasoning of the Apostle
which bases belief in God upon belief in Man, and asserts the divine
nature of human affections, seems indeed borne out by the instincts
of humanity. This is instructively shown, in the case of Machiavelli,
by the general verdict which affirms him to have been an Atheist.
As an assertion of direct unbelief this is untrue. Nowhere does he
deny, or even question, the existence of Deity; nowhere does he
profess to deny the chief verities of the Christian faith. Literally
and explicitly he was far from being an Atheist ; but virtually and
implicitly, his professed and contemptuous indifference for whatever
is divine and Godlike in the relations of men to each other, or in the
providential government of the world, are equivalent to pronounced
Atheism. The world of humanity, which he surveys with cold
comprehensive glance, is a den of raging wild beasts. Its actual
governor is no more reliable or permanent agent than chance. Its
divine order and progress is mere indecisive motion from one
Nowhere to another. The universe, in a word, is a moral chaos :
infinitely more revolting and painful to contemplate than the greatest
physical cataclysm conceivable.

But, while reprobating Machiavelli's conclusions, we must admit
that they are not utterly destitute of justification. His political
system, notwithstanding its basis of Skepticism and distrust, was not
unsuited to the period that gave it birth. Unusual evils demand, or
seem to demand, summary and violent remedies ; and the condition,
political and social, of Italy in the sixteenth century might well have
caused anxiety to the thoughtful politician. What means should be
adopted, he might have asked, to introduce discipline into social
manners, and order and legality into political institutions. Reason-
ing from phenomena before him, and accepting as a precedent the
general course of Italian politics, he could only find the requisite
agencies in material force and unscrupulous cunning. All the ills
from which his country suffered he considered to be owing to its
partition into so many separate states, and to the perpetual divisions
and internecine strife thereby engendered. The continual inter-
vention of foreigners, the mischievous interference of the Papacy,
helped largely to intensify this unhappy state of things. Machia-
velli longed for the advent of some deliverer l — a man with indomit-

1 See the eloquent passage in the last chapter of the Prince^ which Pro-

General Causes and Leaders. 175

able will and iron hand, who might reconstruct and unify the whole
country. The means by which he accomplished this purpose were
of no importance. He might wade to his throne through seas of
blood. He might be guilty of the foulest treachery and corruption.
He might exercise the most unlimited and tyrannical sway over the
minds and bodies of his subjects. His reign might be pregnant with
national demoralization for centuries afterwards. 1 All this mattered
little, provided Italy could attain to strength and independence as
a great European power. I need hardly add that these aspirations,
however defensible on the ground of patriotism, as that virtue was
regarded by Machiavelli, were entirely chimerical. Not only were
the conditions and elements of Italian politics in the sixteenth cen-
tury too antagonistic to allow coherence, but the position of Italy
and her past history in relation to surrounding nations, rendered the
idea, at that time, little better than a grotesque absurdity. Moreover
there is no reason to suppose that Machiavelli contemplated an
Italian despotism as a political finality. All human societies and
organizations were in his opinion in a chronic state of unstable
equilibrium. Each had its natural periods of birth and growth,
decay and death. And this Herakletean flux and reflux was un-
influenced by moral considerations. ' Virtue,' said he, ' produces
repose, repose engenders inactivity, inactivity disorder, and disorder
ruin.' Similarly from ruin comes order, and from order virtue, or
as he expresses the same sentiment in his Asino d 1 oro —

( Vedi le stelle e '1 ciel, vedi la luna
Vedi gli altri pianeti andare errando
Or alto or basso, senza requie alcuna.
Quando il ciel vedi tenebroso, e quando
Lucido e chiaro ; e cosi nulla in terra
Vien nello stato suo perseverando. 1 f

Without insisting that this conception of alternating opposites is
necessarily skeptical, it is easy to see that it lends itself readily to

fessor Settembrini, calls a * National Hymn,' in which Machiavelli invokes
the Future Deliverer of Italy. It ends with the stirring words of Petrarca—

* Virtil contro al furore
Prendera P arme, e fia il combatter corto ;
Che P antico valore
NegP Italici cuor non e ancor morto.'

Comp. Settembrini, Lezioni, etc., ii. 136; and Moritz Carriere, Die Philo-
aophische Weltanschauung Reformation8zeit, pp. 232-236.

1 On this point see some admirable remarks in Sattembrini, Op. cit., Vol. ii.
pp. 137-139.

* Opere, Vol. viii. p. 347.

1

1 76 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

political uncertainty. An observer might well hesitate, for instance,
as to whether any particular process he witnessed was a stage in
growth or in decay, just as a man on the sea-shore might not be able
to say for an instant whether the tide was receding or advancing.

To his political Skepticism must be added decided traces of
twofold truth in his personal character. What to the theologian
[ of his time was a conflict between faith and reason was to Machia-
Vvelli an antagonism between despotism and liberty. This strife,
which he discovered in the political macrocosm, he felt in the
microcosm of his own being. Nothing is more striking, in his
political works, than the juxtaposition of contrary sentiments. In
one sentence, e.g. he praises some political strategy or act of oppor-
. tune cruelty, while in the next he expresses admiration for a deed
of heroism or forbearance (the latter of course having proved itself
to be successful). He is clearly of opinion that, to quote his own
proverb, ' Opposita juxta se posita magis elucescunt.' On which of
the two his affections are really concentrated it is difficult to say,
the efficacy of tyranny and the charms of liberty so equally share
his expressed admiration. Some of his biographers decide the
question by making his feeling for despotism, respect ; while his
sentiment for liberty is the warmer passion of love. Bat it seems
just as probable that there was no real preference of either above
the other. They were rival coefficients in human institutions ; and
the merit of one above the other could only be decided by the cir-
cumstances of the case; and be_JeAt£d^_p^ly_by___success. He was
assuredly far from partaking Milton's generous confidence in the
inherent superiority of truth and freedom, struggling no matter
against what odds; and if he had ever adduced the venerable
maxim, ' Magna est Veritas et prevalebit/ it would have been on the
-distinct understanding that truth must be backed by a superior
material force. One effect of his perpetual oscillation between the
/extremes of despotism and freedom is to impart to his historical
I works an appearance of extreme fairness, which all his critics have
\10ticed and commended. We may regard it as a result of Renais-
sance Free-thought passing into a form of twofold truth. It is a
characteristic shared also by Guicciardini.

Harmonizing with this Skepticism, and partially its source, is
Machiavelli's confessed delight in watching, both in history and in
personal observation, the diversities of thought, character and
manners existing among men ; especially when of different nation-
alities, race and religion. This, as we shall find, was the favourite
occupation of Montaigne, and the root-thought of his Skepticism.
Both observers seem to have drawn from their investigations opinions

General Causes and Leaders. 177

derogatory to humanity, though Montaigne's good-humoured ridicule
of his fellow-men is at least a pleasanter feature than Machiavelli's
moody and misanthropic pessimism.

We thus perceive that Machiavelli's Skepticism is of a peculiar
and impure quality. There is nothing to show that he had ever
expended any thought on the great problems of existence, or that he
deemed their investigation worthy of his intellectual energies. His
practical genius was developed to such an extent that there was little
room left for ideal exercitations. Of truth the sole conception he had
formed was political success, as of Deity his chief notion was Fate or
Destiny. What his ethical principles were we have already noticed.
There is therefore little that is disinterested and generous in his
character as a thinker. The taint of selfishness pervades his thought
as it does also, to a certain extent, his acts and life.

It would not be right to close our remarks on Machiavelli, considered
as a Skeptic without reference to his satire on the Free-thought
of his age, contained in his Anno d'oro. 1 This is, in my judgment,
the most remarkable of his satirical works. It consists of a recon-
struction of the well-known fable, * the Golden Ass,' and is derived
partly from Lucian and Apuleius, and partly from Plutarch. 2 Its
most striking feature is the last canto, in which we have the reflec-
tions of a really ' learned pig,' who, like the hero of the fable, has
once enjoyed the doubtful privilege of human form. This quadruped'
represents, with much thought and humour, the Epicurean character-
istics of the time ; and dilates on the many disadvantages pertaining'
to the manners and customs of that lower animal, man. 8 In some
respects it is a satire even upon Machiavelli's own principles;
certainly the lines : —

' Non da 1' un porco a 1' altro porco doglia,
L' un cervo a 1' altro : solamente 1' uomo
L' altr' uomo ammazza, crocifigge e spoglia ' —

is a severe condemnation of many of the principles contained in the
Prince. In its swinish enjoyment of material pleasures and his con-
tempt for higher or more ideal pursuits, Machiavelli's pig bears a
considerable resemblance to Pulci's Margutte. He distinctly refuses

1 Opere, vol. viii. pp. 866-378.

* Comp. M. Artaud, Machiavel, vol. ii. pp. 80-82.

1 The advantages of the brute creation over humanity, espscially in respect
of their irrationality, has been a favourite theme for satirists and humorists
of all ages. Perhaps the most graceful and poetic treatment it ever received
was in the Idylles des Moutons of Madame Deshoulieres : Amsterdam, 1694.
Comp. Bay le's Diet., Art. Ovid, note H; and see, on same subject, Villari's
Machiavelli, Vol. ii. p. 885, Eng. Trans.

VOL. I. N

1 78 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

to return to the miseries of human existence ; and he sums up the
many advantages of a porcine life in the amusing climax : —

' E se alcuno infra gli uomini ti par divo
Felice e lieto, non gli creder molto
Ch'n questo fango piu felice vivo
Dove senza pensier mi bagno e volto.' l

Machiavelli's intellect was much too restless, and his temperament
too energetic to allow of much wallowing in the sty of Epicurus ; but
the ' senza pensier ' of the last line suggests the thought whether the
absence of pure intellectual speculation, so conspicuous in his writings,
may not be ascribed to intentional self-abnegation ; so that, despairing
of certainty in such topics, he purposely cultivated indifference and
vacuity of thought. At any rate, it is evident that 'senza pensier '
had become an ordinary characteristic of the age, and, as such, arrested
the attention of the satirist and humorist. We may remember that
Pulci's Margutte, with all his tastes and feelings of the very lowest
type of animalism, is nevertheless designated

' II maestro di color che sanno.'

1 See Villari loc. cit. The persons, or causes, aimed at in Machiavelli's
satire have been very variously interpreted. Probably the most unlikely is
Busini's reference of it to Guiociardini, and the adherents of the Medici.
Villari regards its interpretation as * hopelessly impossible at the present
date.' Under the circumstances the reference of it to the most ' piggish ' of
Italian causes then current, — viz. Obscuranticism, — may claim some measure
of recognition.

CHAPTER III.

GENERAL CAUSES AND LEADERS.

. . ... Guicciardini, the historian par excellence of the
Renaissance, though different from, and in many
respect 8 opposed to, Machiavelli in respect of politics, resembles
the great Florentine secretary in his Free-thought proclivities ; and
his intense hatred of sacerdotalism. He was a man of wonderful
perspicacity and breadth of view, of great administrative talents,
and of admirably balanced judgment. With Machiavelli he must
be classed among the dual-sighted men noticed in our chapter on
twofold truth, to whom every subject of human contemplation
presents, not a single and uniform, but complex and multiform
aspect. When he began his celebrated history, or rather the dis-
courses intended as preparatory exercises for it, he adopted the
cautious equilibrating method which must needs characterize every
impartial historian. In describing human motives, state policies,
and all other matters into which some degree of tortuousness and
uncertainty necessarily enter, he posited his subject in the form
of Pros and Cons, summed up with lucidity of method, and a
more than judicial impartiality. His method in politics and history
thus resembled the equipoising of divergent views which distin-
guished the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Abelard, and Peter Lom-
bard. Nor did he adopt these Pro and Con exercises merely as a kind
of youthful gymnastic, as some writers have thought; 1 but because
the twofold method formed an integral portion and manifestation of
his cautious, far-seeing, comprehensive intellect. 2 To suoh an extent
did he carry this method of investigation into human affairs that, as
he himself confesses, when he had decided upon and adopted a given
opinion or line of conduct, though with the utmost determination —
for in practical matters he was anything but an irresolute man — he ex-
perienced afterwards a half-consciousness of repentance as the rejected

1 Cf. e.g. Art. Guicciardini, in ErscJi und Grueber, voL xcvi., section i.,
p. 268 note.
* Gomp. v. Banke, Zur Kritik neuerer GeBchichtschreiber, p. 5.

179

180 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

alternations continued to present themselves to his reflective and ever
busy intellect. 1 The application of this, as a general psychological
truth to creeds and convictions, we have noticed in a previous chapter.
Guicciardini's autobiography and the interesting collection of
maxims or mementos contained in his Inedited works, 3 give us an
insight into his personal character and reveal his sympathies with
the Renaissance movement. Petrarca does not excel him in his con-
tempt for astrology and similar current superstitions of his time, the
pretensions of which he exposes in a clear and forcible manner. 4 Nor
is his disdain less for the super-subtle refinements of the schoolmen
and Averroes. His attitude to Papal Christianity was a mixed senti-
. ment not uncommon to the freer thinkers of his time. The ordinary
I Romish ecclesiastic — a compound of ignorance, greed and hypocrisy—
he utterly detested. One of his fervent prayers for the future of
humanity was, that the world might be delivered from the yoke of
sacerdotalism. On the other hand, brought into contact as he had
been with the higher classes of the Roman hierarchy, for some

C members of which he cherished a sincere friendship, he was
not inclined to favour openly the Lutheran Reformation, which he
himself admits he might have done, 5 had it * not been for those
personal ties. Indeed his relation to Christianity resembles Machia-
(^velli's in being rather that of a politician and moralist, than of a
speculative or religious thinker. Luther's work e.g. commends
itself to him as a potent instrumentality for the subversion of sacer-
dotal claims rather than as a dogmatic reconstruction of Christian
theology. To the dootrines of the Church, except when they bore
directly on practical life, he is indifferent. He expresses his conviction
that the supernatural must, under any conceivable circumstances, be
involved in darkness; and that theologians and philosophers have
only follies to assert concerning it. 6 On the subject of miracles he is
as skeptical as Machiavelli, affirming that they belong naturally to
all religions, and are therefore but a feeble proof of the superiority
or truth of any given religion. He thinks that, in their best attested
form, they are only examples of natural phenomena as yet unex-
plained. 7 He dislikes the excess of dogmatic development which
had become the opprobrium of Christianity, and is shrewd enough to

1 Opere Inedite, i. p. 141 (Ricordi, clvi.).

* Evenings with the Skeptics. Ev. vi.

* Especially vol. i. and x. The former containing hia Ricordi, the latter his
autobiography.

4 Op. Ined., i. pp. 107, 161.

5 Op. Ined., i. pp. 97, 208.
c Op. Ined., i. p. 180.

1 Op. Ined. y i. p. 129. Com p. Burckhardt, Cullur der Renaistance, ii. p. 286.

General Causes and Leaders. 181

detect its mischievous effects on the human character. The result of
over-religiousness, he says, is * intellectual effeminacy, leading men
astray into a thousand errors, and diverting them from generous and
manly enterprises.' In saying this he does not derogate from the
Christian faith, but rather confirms it ; 1 a statement which shows that
Guicciardini also knew how to discriminate between Christianity and
ecclesiasticism. The former he believes is summed up in the duties
of practical benevolence and forbearance. In a striking epitome of
religious duty he says, 2 * I do not find fault with the feasts, prayers, '
and other devotional duties which are ordered by the Church, or men-
tioned by preachers, but the virtue of virtues, in comparison with
which all others are trivial, is to injure no man, and to benefit so far
as we can every man.' Still more striking, perhaps, is his genuinely
Christian tone on the subject of charity and forbearance. In his
* Mementos ' he exhorts his readers not to allow themselves to be \
restrained from beneficence by ingratitude ; for in the bestowal of /
kindness, apart from all considerations of gratitude, there was something
divine ; and the noblest revenge any man could exact from his enemy
was to do him kindness. 3 His large experience of men and human
affairs enters, as a counteracting influence, into his conception of reli-
gious dogmas. On more than one occasion he expresses his belief in
the natural goodness of humanity ; 4 and thinks that men leave the
straight path only by the pressure of temptation ; but this does not
prevent his avowal that the judgments and opinions of bodies of men
are generally determined by falsehood or accident. 6 He also tries to
reconcile the justice of Divine Providence with the course of history.
He cannot understand e.g. how on the ordinary theory of ' God in
history,' the sons of Ludovico Sforza should have inherited Milan,
acquired as it was by the villanous conduct of their father. Experi-
ence has moreover taught him that the triumphs attributed to faith
are well-grounded, but he does not scruple to rationalize its modus
operandi by making it mean persistency. Like Machiavelli, Guic-V
ciardini is a true patriot; but his ideas are more moderate and humane I
than those of his friend. His own warmest aspirations for Italy and
humanity are centred in ' civil and religious liberty.' ' Three things '
he once said, ' I should like to live to see — a well-ordered Republic in

1 ' Ne voglio per questo derogare alia fede cristiana e al culto divino, anzi
coniermarlo e augmentarlo disoernendo il troppo da quello che basta.'
Op. Ined., i. p. 174.

* Op. Ined., i. p. 142.
8 Op. Ined., i. p. 175.
« Op. Ined., i. p. 138.

* Op. Ined., i. p. 214.

1 82 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

r

Florence, Italy set free from all foreigners, and the deliverance of
the world from sacerdotal tyranny.'

Reflecting in so many points the characteristics of his age, it is
not wonderful to find that Guicciardini is also afflicted with the
* Weltschmerz ' which is the prevailing intellectual disease of the
men of the Renaissance. On the occasion of his attaining his thir-
tieth year, 1 he thanks God for the many mercies he had bestowed
upon him, especially for the possession of so much intellect as to dis-
cern the vanity of this life. . . . He expresses a mournful con-
viction that life and human usages such as were then most customary,
were unworthy of a noble-minded, well-nurtured man, and that
perseverance in those usages could not, in his own case at least, be
unattended by the greatest shame. The whole tone of the medita-
tion assimilates it to those aspirations of which we have examples in
Petrarca, Giordano Bruno and others, in which dissatisfaction with
the present is blended with a hopeful yearning for a future of freedom
and enlightenment. No doubt there was much in the political events
and social manners, no less than in the ecclesiastical affairs, of his
time to justify that dissatisfaction ; and there were also a few symp-
toms of an amelioration in human thought and life which might have
been held to warrant a sanguine view of the future. I have already
quoted a passage from his thoughts in which Guicciardini pronounces
a favourable estimate of humanity ; but this it may be feared is an
ex 'parte and sentimental view, prompted perhaps by pleasant social
intercourse ; certainly it is not borne out by the general tone of his
writings. Montaigne, with his usual keen observation, remarked that
in his History * among the many motives and counsels on which he
adjudicates, he never attributes anyone of them to virtue, religion or
conscience, as if all those were quite extinct in the world. 7 2 The
accusation applies more or less to most of the historians and chron-
iclers of the Renaissance. We have already marked the excess to
which Machiavelli carried his distrust of human nature. But
Guicciardini's mind was too well balanced, and his judgment too
comprehensive, to allow him to share Machiavelli's moral Skepticism.
His History dealt with the period of the greatest political corruption
and social depravity in all Italian history ; and it was only reasonable
that it should take its colouring from the personages and events which
it describes ; but I cannot help thinking that Montaigne's opinion is
somewhat exaggerated, and needs that modification which is so

1 Op. Ined., x. p. 89.

1 Essais, book ii., ch. 10. Compare Guicciardini, Op. Ined., x., Introduction,
p. xxvii. Guicciardini resembles Montaigne in having sought retirement from
the follies and vanities of his time.

General Causes and Leaders. 183

readily and pleasingly supplied by the collection of his 'Inedited
Works.* These must now be held to supply the best available mate-
rials for estimating Guicciardini's character, and there can be no
question as to the substantial excellence of the self-revealed portrait. 1
In addition to what I have already said on this point, I may observe
that the extent of his sympathy with the free-culture of the Renais-
sance is as great as could have been expected from his somewhat
d. austere and reserved temperament. A firm believer in Christianity,
he refused to accept either the superstitious or dogmatic additions by
which its primal purity had been corrupted. His belief in the super-
natural was too profound and well-grounded to permit an easy
acquiescence in interpretations of it suggested by human ignorance or
ecclesiastical self-interest. Of his sincere piety there can be as
little question as of his probity and integrity. The main element in
his character-formation was the indomitable independence which
enabled him to survey the events and personages of his time as from
a lofty standpoint of self-contained and completely equipped individ-
uality. As a type of moderate and restrained Free-thought, Guicciar-
dini may contrast with men like Luigi Pulci, who represent extreme
and libertine aspects of the Renaissance. Indeed it is only by a
comparative method, such as we have adopted in these chapters, that
the varied phases of any great mental movement can be adequately
appreciated. A similarity of influences and environment will no
more in the moral than in the physical world engender an identity
of product. The characters I have sketched were chosen purposely
as representing, so far as possible, all the prominent varieties of
Renaissance-culture. No doubt we might have found examples of
men more free in their opinions, more unrestrained in their conduct,
more inimical to Christianity than Pulci and Machiavelli ; and there
are instances of prominent thinkers, who, with a bias to Free-thought,
are still more moderate in its exercise than Guicciardini ; but by \
taking, as we have, examples of neither extreme we shall be more \
likely to obtain a fair average of the general thought of the period. /

Casting a backward glance over the men whose Free- thought ten-
dencies I have thus attempted to discriminate and describe (for we
must reserve to Pomponazzi a philosophical and academical niche
for himself) we find the human intellect, in the Renaissance, returning
to itself from the wilds of Sacerdotalism and Superstition. There is
a Renaissance of the human reason so long crushed beneath the iron
heel of Authority — a new birth of Nature after a long winter of

1 Comp. especially his letter to Machiavelli, Op. Ined., p. 100, perhaps the
best document among all his writings for determining his true character, on
account of its unconscious self -portraiture.

1 ^

1 84 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

asceticism and monkish fanaticism. A fresh starting-point for know-
ledge and science, after ages of obscurantism and darkness — a revival
of freedom after intellectual and religious thraldom. A Renaissance
of humanity from the tomb of a corrupt theology, and a resurrec-
tion of Christianity itself from the grave-clothes and rocky sepulchre
in which Romanism had invested and buried it, as the Jews of old
did its Founder. The men whom I have selected as types of the
movement, notwithstanding strongly-marked individual characteristics,
clearly discerned the general signs of the times. The origin and
scope of the Free-thought common to them all may have differed in
every particular case ; with some it was the method, with others the sole
object of enfranchisement ; but there was no conflict of opinion as to
the propriety of employing it. For excessive dogma the clear remedy
was Skepticism and Negation, independent search and inquiry.
Whatever else was uncertain, there was no hesitation on this point.
Nor was there any doubt as to the propriety of opposing Reason to
Authority, and human interests to sacerdotal pretensions. Nor again
was there any question as to the desirability of a return to nature.
The main lines, in short, of the Renaissance movement were accepted
by all. Its energies and aspirations constituted points of union be-
tween men of varying idiosyncrasies, professions and sympathies ; and
secured their co-operation in the holy cause of freedom and culture.

We must now turn to the single Philosophical Skeptic in our
List

POMPONAZZI.

Here we enter upon a new vista of Italian thought, that which
pertains not to courts, literary and ecclesiastical circles, and to
ordinary citizens, but to universities and lecture rooms. From his
earliest manhood to his death Pomponazzi was a Professor of Philo-
sophy. He therefore represents a different standpoint from any of
the thinkers we have already considered. His Skepticism is not the
accidental product of a particular period ; for had he lived at any
other time than the fifteenth century he must have been a free and in-
dependent thinker — a ruthless dissector of conventional beliefs. His
doubt was engendered not by wayward or transient ebullitions of
freedom, nor by mere dissatisfaction with excessive dogma — the
tendency was inherent in his nature.

As we are thus passing over from the region of popular and literary
to that of philosophical skepticism, this will be a fitting place to
glance at the general causes which contributed, during the latter
portion of the Renaissance, to create and sustain, in Italian Univer-
sities, the reasoned unbelief of which Pomponazzi is the most worthy
but by no means the sole representative.

General Causes and Leaders. 185

Skepticism in Greece was entirely ratiocinative ; in the Italian
Renaissance it was generally intuitional and spontaneous. Most of\
the influences we have noticed were instinctive rebounds against \
intellectual tyranny, rather than deliberate self-contained investi- J
gations into- the problems of existence. I do not mean to say thay
those instincts might not, after their primary manifestation, have
sought to justify themselves by reason ; or that, in certain cases, they
might not have been secretly prompted by reason ; all I contend for
is, that the preparatory reasoning process is mostly suppressed, or
occupies a subordinate place in the final result. At the same time
Italian Skepticism is an indigenous product. The Free-thought of
the Goliards, the Fabliaux, Provencal poetry, etc. in Italy and else-
where manifests itself as a fresh spontaneous outcome of popular
conviction and sentiment. Examples of Skepticism and Rationalism
occur far back in the middle ages, as we have already noticed, though
rather in isolated flashes than continuous rays. But we cannot place
earlier than the fifteenth century the classical impulse, as a generally \
co-operating agency in the production of free speculation. During )
that century we find in Italy a ' considerable number of men who '
organized themselves as followers of Epikouros and other thinkers of
antiquity, in opposition to the belief of the Church, and the restraints
of social life. But their authorities and sources of inspiration were
chiefly traditional. No work of any avowed Greek Skeptic was known
to Italy until the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, certainly not
until the later period if the knowledge be understood to apply to the
Greek language. The classical authors who introduced philosophical
doubt into Italy were, in literary circles, Cicero and Seneca ; and
in academic circles, Aristotle's works. The skeptical effect of
Cicero's eclecticism I have mentioned ; and something of the same
power would attach to Aristotle as well, especially as he was yet but
an un-texted ' umbra nominis ' and a nucleus of conflicting com-
ments. Among ecclesiastical authors, portions of Augustine's works
must also be enumerated as having, on minds of a certain class, a
dogma-disturbing effect. Writing in the fourteenth century, Plethon's
exponents of doubt and certainty are respectively Pyrrhon and
Protagoras ; for he curiously accepts the well known maxim of the
latter writer — * Man is the measure of all things/ as an affirmation •
of human infallibility. 1 The first complete contact of the Italian
mind with the Sokratic elonchus dates from the rise of the Platonists
in Florence. The Platonism that existed previously — perhaps taking

1 Comp. Fritz Schulze, OeschiclUe der Philosophic der Renaissance, Erster
Band, p. 142.

1 86 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

its tone from the theological abstractions and dogmatic passivity
of the Church — represented merely the idealism of Plato, and took no
account of the severe questioning and skeptical suspense of his
master. The first employment of the Sokratic elenchus as a l Pars
destruens ' of Philosophy was by Picus Mirandola, who used it
against Peripateticism. Our survey of Pomponazzi will show that
besides other applications in the direction of Skepticism, Aristoteli-
anism continued to develop that peculiar anti-dogmatic relation to the
Church which resulted from its acceptance by the Schoolmen as a
system of secular truth equal in validity to the sacred verities
promulgated by Christianity.

The age of Machiavelli and Pomponazzi introduces us also to the new
life of the Italian Universities — the academic portion of the Renais-
sance. Speaking generally, this consisted in the virtual displace-
ment of theology by philosophy and science. During the latter half
of the fifteenth and the whole of the sixteenth centuries all the in-
fluential chairs in these seats of learning were filled not by theologians
but by philosophers. Ecclesiastical dogma, so far as it arrogated
to itself an independence of all reasoning and discussion, was left in
the enjoyment of her inviolable supremacy accompanied by the super-
cilious disregard of the newer thinkers. What was asserted as the
dogmatic creed of the Church was refused a hearing before the courts
of Reason and Logic, unless it chose to divest itself of infallibility and
other supernatural immunities, and make its plea on the grounds
and by the methods of demonstrable truth. This was the position of
the doctrine of Immortality, the discussion of which forms such a
salient feature in the life of Pomponazzi. Removed by the Skepticism
of the age from its exclusive ground of ecclesiastical dogma, it was
accepted by the Universities as a moot point of philosophy, to be deter-
mined by an appeal to Aristotle or some equally irrefragable authority
in physical science. If this treatment of it as an open question was
not adopted, the only remaining alternative for the Italian thinker
was the theory of Two-fold Truth, and this was accepted without
hesitation by all the foremost teachers in Italy during the sixteenth
century. However immoral the consequences of that doctrine in
special cases, it undoubtedly provided a free scope for reason and secu-
lar science, on which those influences had now grown powerful enough
to insist. On this point the divergent and often hostile schools of
Aristotelians and Platonists were quite at one. The materialists of
the former, and the idealists among the latter were equally firm in
their determination to reason upon their accepted principles without
suffering undue interference from ecclesiastical dogma. As they i.

were careful to point out, they were philosophers, not theologians. \

General Causes and Leaders. 187

Their concern was, exclusively, secular culture. Human reason and
logic were their sole recognized instruments, the wisdom of the
ancients, their only authority. They were no doubt alive to the
possibility of their conclusions traversing some dogma or ecclesiastical
decree, possibly standing in opposition to a fundamental maxim of
Christian Revelation. But this consideration was regarded by them
as sentimental and subordinate. The antagonism between Faith and
Reason, if their mental advance arrived at such a point, was deemed
not to be of their own seeking ; at most it was but an incidental out-
come of their truth search. The autonomy of the reason and entire
freedom of thought in all secular subjects, must at any cost be
preserved. Besides, the faculty of reason, the pursuit of truth,
were not these also to be regarded as Divine? Were popes and
councils the sole channels of truth, secular as well as'sacred ? Had
traditional Christianity a monopoly of all conceivable truth and
goodness ? In the corrupt state of the Church such questions were
redolent of the bitterest sarcasm. Hence the Philosophers took
their own course. They commented on Aristotle and Plato as pure
disciples of the Academy and Lyceum, and as if their lot had been cast
in Greece 400 B.C. instead of in Italy in the sixteenth century a.d.
Cremonini, in the latter part of that century, announced publicly from
his chair at Padua, that he followed the teachings of Aristotle and
the dicta of philosophers, though he was quite aware that they con-
flicted occasionally with the dogmas of the Church. Pomponazzi,
Bruno and Vanini are three different illustrations of the same truth
which will come within the scope of our present enquiry. As an
illustration of this subordination of theology to philosophy in Italy,
I have already pointed out the striking fact, that all the great Italian
theologians of the time, Bonaventura, Anselm, Peter Lombard and
Aquinas acquired their celebrity in foreign countries and seats of
learning, not in their native land. 1

What was thus true of the philosophers was in a lesser degree true
also of the poets and literati. In their own manner these also cher-
ished a form of dual truth. Just as the thinkers refused to permit
the encroachment of dogmas in their intellectual proceedings, so did
the poets refuse to allow their imaginations to be thwarted and cir-
cumscribed by similar agencies. Dante, Petrarca, Pulci, Ariosto and
Tasso even, when they touch upon subjects connected with the teaching
of the Church yet preserve the freedom and autonomy of their own
creations. Pulci, as we have seen, goes a step further, and employs
his imagination to burlesque the teachings of the Church. The

1 Comp. Berti, Oiord. Bruno, p. 257 ; Bartoli, 1 Primi due Secoli, p. 201.

1 88 Tlte Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

others, while maintaining an attitude of external reverence to ecclesi-
astical dogma, evinced in varying degrees a tendency to regulate
their poetic flights more by their own spiritual instincts, their sense
of fi tne88 and love of liberty, than by the restrictions of ecclesiastical
dogma. Tasso and Ariosto, as above remarked, are inclined to find
compensation in their poetic visions and ideal representations of
human life for the evil which attached to the ecclesiastical and social
life of Italy. Unconsciously they pitted their poetic reveries, their
sublime conceptions of truth and humanity, against the sordid and
polluted conceptions forced on their countrymen by the Papal
church.

Our sketch of Pomponazzi will also remind us of another circum-
stance which made Italy the centre of European Free-thought in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I mean the supremacy of Rome,
and the peculiar effect of that position in an age of intellectual fer-
ment and active speculation, in concentrating varying lines of thought
upon herself as the infallible centre of orthodox belief. No doubt it
had long been the result of the dominion arrogated by the chief seat
of Western Christendom, that alleged unorthodox and heretical notions
of every kind should be finally tested at Rome ; but in an age of intel-
lectual stagnation this fact had no very stirring effect on the minds
of the Italians. Now, however, after the quickening process of the
Renaissance, it assumed quite another aspect. Rome, unconsciously
to itself, became the focus of European speculation. Just as the
intellectual activities of Greece converged on Athens, so did the
wayward impulses, the eccentric ideas, the rationalizing opinions of
Christendom find a meeting-point at the seat of the Papacy. The
Papal Regesta furnish us with numberless examples of the activity of
the Roman Curia, in this particular, previous to the rise of the Inqui-
sition. Pomponazzi's books, we shall find, were sent to the pope for
condemnation. One effect of this centralization of various opinions,
In an age of great mental excitation, was to create something like an
exchange of forbidden ideas. Indeed, the heterodox opinions of some
Sicilian or German bishop stood a far better chance of intellectual
discussion at Rome among e.g. the cardinals of Leo X. than in the
districts in which they were originated ; and in the fifteenth century
neither Roman ecclesiastics nor citizens were to be readily intimi-
dated by the threat of Papal thunder. The consequence was that
Rome during the Renaissance was a " colluvies hsBreticdrum " — the
centre of religious and philosophical speculation, whether conformable
to ecclesiastical dogma or not.

General Causes and Leaders. 189

PomDonazzi ^° muc ^ ^y wftv °^ preface, though necessarily

brief, as to the intellectual and religious environ-
ment in which Pomponazzi was born a.d. 1462, in the town of
Mantua. His family is said to have been noble and conspicuous, but
nothing further seems known respecting it. Of his early years we
are similarly in complete ignorance. The first definite information
we have of him is that he was a student of medicine and philosophy
in the University of Padua. His most esteemed teachers, he tells us,
were Antonius and Trapolino, men of some celebrity in those days,
but whose names are now nearly forgotten. In the year 1487 Pom-
ponazzi took his degrees in philosophy and medicine, and the year
following, when he was only twenty-six years of age, we find him
established as extraordinary Professor in the University — a sufficient
testimony to the precocity of his intellect. It was a custom, we are
told, at Padua in those days, to elect two professors representing
different points of view of the same subject ; so that by their public
disputations the minds of the students should be stimulated to inde-
pendence of thought, eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and readiness
to detect error. The existence of such a custom affords an interesting
proof of the freedom of teaching and discussion ; which, notwith-
standing ecclesiastical repression, was not uncommon in the Italian
Universities ; a feature probably not altogether unconnected with the
municipal rights and popular privileges pertaining to the Free Towns
which for the most part gave them birth. The ordinary Professor of
Philosophy, to whom the youthful Pomponazzi was appointed coad-
jutor, was a veteran teacher and Peripatetic thinker called Achillini ;
and their dialectic tournaments appear to have excited no small
interest in the University. Let us try and conjure up one of those
scenes, not only interesting in themselves as representations of me-
diaeval science and manners, but throwing considerable light on the
position and character of Pomponazzi and the reform he endeavoured
to effect.

We may imagine ourselves then in Padua on a summer's day of
the year 1488— time about 8 a.m. The narrow streets of the old
town are crowded with citizens and students, who not only fill the
arcades, but to a considerable extent the middle of the roadways.
Among the students are to be seen men of various ages, from the beard-
less youth of sixteen to the man of thirty-five or forty years. Hardly
less varied are their nationalities. Here a group of Englishmen,
conspicuous by costume, language and physiognomy, is followed
by another of Frenchmen, with their national dress and character-
istics. Spaniards and Germans, Hungarians and Bohemians, not to
mention natives of smaller European States, are discernible among the

1 90 The Skeptics of t/ie Italian Renaissance.

crowd. 1 Occasionally an university professor passes in broad-sleeved
gown and long train. All seem hastening in the same direction. We
accost a fellow-countryman, who is hurrying past with a book under
his arm. We ask him where he is going, and what is the meaning of
the unusual excitement in the streets. He looks with surprise at us,
and answers that he is going to the ' Palazzo della Ragione ' — the Pa-
lace of Justice or Reason, to see the combat. On our further enquiry,
What combat? he regards us with still more astonishment, and asks in
return if we are not aware that in the aforesaid Great Hall of Reason
there is about to commence a discussion between the renowned Pro-
fessor Achillini and young Pomponazzi, on the profound and inter-
esting question of the simplicity or multiplicity of the Intellect?
Telling him, in reply, that we are strangers, newly arrived from
England, and are quite ignorant of what is passing in Padua and her
famous university, we ask him to show us the way to the scene of the
literary tournament. He immediately consents, and bidding us
follow him, he leads the way for a short distance until we arrive at
the open market-place and the ' Palazzo della Ragione.' We enter
with the crowd into the great hall, the enormous proportions of which
still astonish the visitor to Padua ; and, thanks to our guide, we are
enabled to find a fairly good place not far from the seats which aro
reserved for the authorities of the town and university, and the two
low desks placed in readiness for the combatants. The hall, notwith-
standing its size, is quite crowded with students and citizens ; and
for a time the hubbub is almost deafening, arising mainly from the
vehement and voluble discussions of eager partizans as to the com-
parative superiority of the two professors, intermingled occasionally
with somewhat free expressions of opinion on current political
events. Never before have we witnessed such a scene, never could we
have imagined that among such a crowd an interest so passionate
could have been evoked by questions so speculative and metaphysical.
We audibly express our wonder at the sight, as well as our doubt
whether in any of the great European seats of learning such a scene
had ever been witnessed. To our wondering enquiry, a companion,
who said he had recently come to Padua from the University of Paris,
replied that from what he could hear of the merits and arguments of

1 It can hardly be necessary to adduce Shakspeare's well-known reference in
the * Taming of the Shrew ' to —

1 Fair Padua, nursery of arts,'

as a proof of its celebrity in England during the sixteenth century, and of the
fact of its being a favourite resort of Englishmen. For some information on
this subject, see Bartholmess 1 Giordano Bruno, p. 869, note ix.

General Causes and Leaders. 191

the rival philosophers they were Italian representatives of Abelard
and William of Champeaux, and if he dared prognosticate the issue
of the contest, it was like to terminate, as that well-known philo-
sophical duel terminated in Paris, in favour of the younger and
bolder thinker. * You are right,' answered an Italian : ' our " little
Peter " l is a second Abelard. I have been told that he resembles
him in expression, size, and figure, as well as in name, and the free-
dom with which he handles philosophical questions. As to his
victory over Achillini, that is a mere question of time. Peterkin's
lectures are crowded already, and Achillini's audiences are beginning
to dwindle. 7 A bystander who had been listening to our discussion,
hereupon angrily interferes with the remark, that this is not the
case : Achillini's hearers are as numerous as ever, and are not likely
to be lessened by such an insignificant upstart as little Peter of
Mantua. Further argument is prevented by the entry of the rival
champions, accompanied by the Rector and a few of the officials of the
university. This is the signal for an outburst of vociferous applause
which seems to shake the walls of the old hall ; partizans on either
side clamorously shout the name of their particular favourite, salu-
ting them by such cognomina as their affections, or the expected
issue of the approaching contest, might suggest. Achillini thus be-
comes, with an obvious reference to the struggle between the Homeric
hero and Hector — Achilles ; while the disciples of Pomponazzi con-
tinue to greet him with the more familiar soubriquet of ' Peretto '
or Peterkin. We now turn our attention to the two heroes of the
fray, who are taking their assigned positions in the centre of the hall.
The contrast between them is remarkable. Achillini is a striking-
looking man of about thirty years of age. He is rather tall and
stout in proportion, though a student's stoop of the shoulders detracts
somewhat from his height. He possesses an intellectual countenance,
which in repose seems placid and reflective, with large dreamy-look-
ing eyes. He walks up to his desk with a careless slouching gait.
His professor's gown, we notice, is torn in several places, and is
further remarkable by its narrow sleeves and general scanty propor-
tions. Instead of forming a train behind him it scarcely reaches
below his knees. Evidently a man regardless of personal appearance.
His adversary, on the other hand, is almost a dwarf, with a powerful-
looking face, a broad forehead, a hooked nose which imparts a
somewhat Jewish cast to his features, small piercing black eyes,
which, as he turns here and there, give him a peculiar expression of

1 Pomponazzi was called by his disciples and friends ' Peretto, 1 the diminu-
tion of Peter, from his dwarfish stature.

192 T/ie Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

restless vivacity. His thin lips are almost continually curled into a
satirical smile. He has scarce any hair on his face, so that there is
nothing to hide its sudden and perpetual change of expression. l A
born enquirer and skeptic ! ' is our mental ejaculation as he takes
his place at his desk. 1

The preparations for the combat are characteristic of the men.
Achillini has on the desk before him a row of ponderous folios, which
an assistant, a favourite disciple, is marshalling in due order ; Pom-
ponazzi has nothing but a few papers, containing apparently references
and notes.

At last the moment arrives. An usher proclaims silence ; the Rector
of the University announces the subject to be debated ; and the wordy
battle begins. Achillini, with a loud and rather coarse voice, but with
great deliberation of manner, lays down in a short speech the pro-
position he intends to defend. ' The intellect is simple, uniform, in-
decomposable. This is clearly, 7 he affirms ' the opinion of Aristotle,
as testified by Averroes, his greatest commentator ; and he is willing
to defend this position against all comer8. , When Achillini thus ends
his brief preparatory address, his partisans applaud for several seconds.
But a still greater storm of cheering arises when Pomponazzi stands
forward at his desk and throws his restless eagle glance over the
noisy crowd. So short is his stature that he can hardly be discerned.
Some of Achillini's partizans jocosely request him ' to stand upon his
desk,' others offer to take him on their shoulders. His own ad-
herents scornfully retort that a dwarf has frequently proved more than

1 These personal characteristics of the rival professors are drawn from con-
temporary sources. On Achillini, see Tiraboschi, Storia, etc., Tom. vi., part ii., p.
712 ; and Niceron, Memoirs, etc. xxxvi. pp. 1-5. Renan (Averroes, p. 862) seems
to regard him as a mere debater, though he evidently was much more. His
dialectical prowess was once acknowledged by the flattering alternative which
has frequently been applied, perhaps more appropriately, to professors of the
noble art of fisticuffs, ' Aut Diabolus, aut magnus Achillinus.' On Pomponazzi,
cf. Tiraboschi, op. cit., Tom. viL, part ii., p. 614 ; Ginguene, Histoire Liter-
aire oVItalie, vii. pp. 484, 485. But the main source for Pomponazzi's personal
appearance and mode of argumentation, etc., is the testimony of his disciple
Paulus Jovius, Elog. Doct. Ptr., xxxvi. Comp. Fiorentino, pp. 12, 18. Most
writers who have dwelt upon these contests seem to imply a strong contrast, in
point of age, between Pomponazzi and his adversary ; but this is clearly wrong.
The men were nearly of the same age. The main distinction consisted in the
fact that Achillini was an experienced debater, who had hitherto held undis-
puted sway in Padua ; whereas Pomponazzi was, comparatively, a new comer,
who had his spurs yet to win in the field of philosophy. Hence the remark
of M. Franck, ' Pomponace avait l'ardeur, la con fiance, le prestige de la jeu-
nesse, tandis qu* Achillini touchait a son declin,' is quite unfounded. Comp.
Moralities el Philosopher, par A. Franck, p. 91.

General Causes and Leaders. 193

a match for a giant, and augur for their ' Little Peter ' a victory as
certain as that of David the Jewish shepherd boy over his ponderous
antagonist. When these amenities have ceased, Pomponazzi begins
to speak ; and in a tone of voice, full, clear and round, which makes
itself heard in every part of the hall, 1 he takes exception to Achillini's
argument. The intellect he maintains is not simple but multiple ; and
this he will prove is Aristotle's real opinion, who must be interpreted
not by the misty and incomprehensible comments of Averroes — a man
of alien race and mental sympathies — but by the lucid testimony of
his great fellow-countryman, Alexander of Aphrodisias. That this is
Aristotle's view he will also show from Thomas Aquinas, Albertus
Magnus, etc., etc. There is, again, vociferous applause when ' Little
Peter 1 ceases ; and it is easy to perceive that his adherents outnumber
considerably those of his antagonist.

We need not try to follow the debate, which is carried on with the
pedantic formality of method, subtlety of logical and linguistic termi-
nology, and licence of attendant circumstances, which mark such
philosophical tournaments of the Renaissance. Both combatants pro-
fess to be guided by Aristotle ; but as there is no Greek text which each
equally acknowledges (and if there were, neither would have been able
to read it), the advantages of possessing a common authority are
merely nominal. Achillini is evidently a man of immense erudition
and dialectical power, and his tactics are directed either to overwhelm
his adversary with some formidable and crushing dictum, or to en-
snare him in the meshes of an involved and insidious argument. 2 In
either case his attempts are utterly foiled by the caution and vigilance
of his foe. Pomponazzi is too wary to allow himself to be impaled
on the horns of a dilemma, or caught in a well-baited half-concealed
dialectical trap. He is also prompt to turn the tables on his powerful,
though somewhat unwieldy, antagonist. In quickly uttered sentences,
he takes exception to a few words, or some short proposition, in the
long-drawn argument which Achillini has just announced ; and with

1 Paulas Jovius speaks with especial commendation of Pomponazzi's orato-
rical powers.

1 Achillini's erudition, and dialectical power, seems sufficiently attested by
his collected writings. These are entitled Alexandri Achillini Bononiemis
Philosophi celeberrimi Opera Omnia in unum collects*. Venetiis mdxlv. It is
perhaps needless to add that the volume is excessively rare. Some few years
since the author was fortunate enough to find Achillini's folio, which a former
possessor, mindful of one of the most famous of mediaeval controversies, had
bound up with the collected edition of Pomponazzi's works. Tractattu, etc.,
Venetiis mdxxv. The book forms one of the rarest treasures of his library.
Achillini's treatment of the question here discussed, between himself and
Pomponazzi, may be found in Book iii. Doubt iv. of his Quodlibeta, fol. 14

VOL. I. ^

194 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

flashing eyes and a sareastic smile he burlesques them by a witty
parallel statement, points out their inherent absurdity, and thus raises
a laugh at the expense of his foe. Or, more at length, and in serious
measured tones, 1 he analyses Achillini's propositions, points out
some glaring inconsistency between their different parts, or between
the conclusion sought to be deduced and the dicta of standard authori-
ties. It must be admitted our skeptic is not very scrupulous in his
choice of argument, provided he can amuse the audience. 8 Each of his
witty sallies or comic arguments is hailed with boisterous laughter
and applause, which even Achilhni's partizans are compelled to join.
Clearly the audience have scant sympathy for long and involved dia-
lectical processes, and warmly approve short and pithy ratiocination,
based upon mother wit and common sense.

The contest is obviously unequal : it reminds one of that between
a whale and a sword fish, or readers of Scott's novels might find an
apt illustration in the encounters between the ponderous Dominie
Sampson and the ' facetious ' but rather agile Pleydell. It is to no
purpose that Achillini complains of the impertinence of Pomponazzi's
replies, or protests that his witticisms and sarcasms are no real
answer to a serious philosophical argument. Pomponazzi has won
the ears of his audience, and may so far be said to have achieved
victory.

We need dwell no further upon this attempted representation of
scenes in which our skeptic was involved during his residence at
Padua. To my mind, these literary duels of the fifteenth century are
significant of the increasing divergence between ancient and modern
thought. 8 Achillini typifies Scholasticism : with its methods and
ratiocination — formal, ponderous, elaborate and unelastic. Pom-
ponazzi represents modern thought : keen, eager, restless, vivacious,
caring little for traditional prooesses and authorities merely as such,
and much for the clear, simple dictates of unfettered human reason.
The fact that such a scene was possible, that popular and academic
sympathies were already enlisted on the side of philosophical neolo-
gianism, is a clear indication of the transition of thought which was
taking, place in Italy ; and which claims Pomponazzi as one of the

1 See reference above to Ginguene, Histoire, etc., vii. p. 435.

1 Comp. Prof. Fiorentino, in his paper, * Di alcuni manoscritti Aretini del
Pomponazzi, 1 in OiomcUe Napolitano, Agosto, 1878, p. 116.

8 Comp. the description of Giordano Bruno's disputes with the Peripatetics of
Paris nearly a century later, in Signor Berti's Giord. Bruno, p. 198. These
dialectical tournaments seem to have lost in France and elsewhere much of the
free, popular, and informal character which distinguished them in their native
home— the Italian Universities.

Getieral Causes and Leaders. 195

earliest and most potent of the instruments which combined to
effect it.

The prophecy with which I have credited one of my characters
in the preceding scene is founded on fact. Pomponazzi did succeed
in drawing off most of the hearers of Achillini ; and so far made good
his supposed resemblance toAbelard, and the success of that thinker in
opposing William of Champeaux. With the fame thus early acquired
his future as a teacher of philosophy was assured. Nevertheless the
date of his enrolment among the ordinary professors of the University
is uncertain. His latest biographer, Fiorentino, who has displayed great
industry in bringing together the few scattered facts of which any
records are left concerning him, tells us that the first intimation of
such a promotion is in a document bearing date October, 1495, in
which Pomponazzi is styled * Ordinary Professor of Natural Philo-
sophy/ l Four years later he achieved a still higher position, for by
the interest of Cardinal Bembo he obtained the first chair in the
University. He continued his professorial labours, commenting on
the works of Aristotle, until 1509. In that year, owing to the
disasters which followed upon the League of Cambray and the policy
of Pope Julius II., the University of Padua was closed, and its pro-
fessors and students were dispersed throughout Italy. Pomponazzi,
attended by a number of attached disciples, found a temporary refuge
in Ferrara; where he still continued his lectures and his studies.
From Ferrara he moved, about the year 1512, to the University of
.Bologna, which was destined to become the seat of his greatest
literary activity, as well as his abode during the remainder of his life.
When Pomponazzi took possession of his professorship, Bologna was
recovering from the social disturbances to which she had long been
made a prey by the misgovernment of her rulers. The last of these was
driven forth by Pope Julius II. in 1506, and the town was incorporated
with ' the States of the Church. 7 Bologna benefited by the change in
her position. Her municipal and academic privileges were preserved.
The pope placed both town and university under the government of
forty magistrates; and under this regime she enjoyed a large measure
of freedom and independence. 2 To the magistracy of Bologna, and
their sympathy for intellectual liberty and progress, Pomponazzi was

1 Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 15.

* Com p. Sismondi, Republiquei Italiennes, x. p. 89. ( II (Julias H.) fit en grande
pompe son entree ft Bologne : il conserva a la ville ses privileges et son admini-
stration republicaine, mais en changeant sa constitution/ etc. . . . Then
after describing how the new senate of forty was composed, Sismondi proceeds,
4 l'oligarchie des quarante de Bologne a administre cette province avec plosieurs
prerogatives qui rappsloient sa liberte et son ancienne independence.'

196 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

indebted for much kindness and support during the most critical
period of his life.

In the year 1516 Pomponazzi published his famous treatise on the
Immortality of the Soul, the foundation both of his character as a
skeptic, and his fame as a philosopher. In this work, says Fiorentino.
1 he ceases to be a Greek commentator, and reveals himself as an
original thinker ; he lays the foundation of the philosophy of the
Italian Renaissance. 7 1 The immediate occasion of writing this work is
differently told. Fiorentino e.g. tells a story of Pomponazzi's illness,
during which he held discourses with his disciples concerning the
future world. One of his pupils requests his master to resolve some
doubts, which his own teaching had suggested, respecting the conflict-
ing opinions of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the Immortality of
the Soul. The request is said to have prompted the research which
resulted in the treatise. No doubt such requests were frequently
made to the free-thinking professor ; and so far the story is not in-
trinsically improbable. But I should be inclined to attribute the
work to more general causes. The intellectual tendencies of the time,
together with Pomponazzi's own labours, and mental proclivities, are
quite enough to account for its production.

We have already 8 had occasion to notice the position of Aristotle
during the middle ages, and his utility in furnishing to minds too large
or too restless to be confined by ecclesiastical dogma, a point (Vappui
for speculation outside its boundaries. In the fifteenth century it
became necessary to review this position. The rivalry of Peripatetics
and Platonists, which distinguished and stimulated the Italian Re-
naissance, the research into Nature which characterized it, together
with the discovery and printing of the original texts of Aristotle's
writings, combined to turn men's attention to those venerated deposi-
tories of Greek wisdom. Other critics and thinkers began, as
Pomponazzi did, their career of free-enquiry by i Dubitazioni sopra
Aristotle. 7 In those days such a title was hardly less than an open
declaration of intellectual rebellion. Aristotle no longer held the
position he had occupied during the twelfth century. 3 He was no
longer outside the pale of Christianity. Tacitly, and unofficially, the
Stagirite had been received into the Church. His works had been
authoritatively reconciled with its dogmas. To effect this was the

1 Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 30.

- See Evenings with the Skeptics, vol. ii. p. 229, on Semi-Skepticism of the
Schoolmen.

8 M. Jourdain places the full introduction of Aristotelian Philosophy into
Scholasticism between a.d. 1200, and the death of Thomas Aquinas in 1272.
See his JRecherches, etc., 2nd ed., p. 210.

General Causes and Leaders. 197

main object of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, the most
gigantic intellects among the schoolmen. There was less difficulty in
effecting this, as few of the works of Aristotle were then known, and
these only in the form of Latin translations made from Arabic ver-
sions. * Doubts about Aristotle ' therefore not only implied, * Doubts
about Aquinas and other Aristotelian ecclesiastics' whose opinions
were considered indubitable, but were closely akin to * Doubts about
Christian dogmas.' That his Aristotelian researches had this result
in the case of a bold and keen-sighted thinker like Pomponazzi, can
at least occasion no surprise.

But besides Pomponazzi's own tendencies, another general cause
of his research in this direction may be found in the contemporary
stir among Italian thinkers on this very subject. The Renaissance
was in a great degree a secularizing process ; it was a protest against
the systematic vilification of all temporal interests, feelings, and occu-
pations which characterized medieval thought and religion. The
reason of this depreciation of all mundane interests and duties, on
the part of the Church, was according to these freer spirits not far
to find. It was by no means the unselfish wish to bring light
and immortality to light through the gospel, nor the desire to
secure for all men a share in the Divine bounty. Other motives
and aspirations had long actuated Papal ecclesiasticism. Rome had
discovered that the future world, with its deterrent and stimu-
lating influences, was the most valuable appanage pertaining to
the Church. It was the El Dorado whence it was enabled to draw
the greater portion of its enormous revenues. Immortality, the
reward or rather the necessary outcome of virtue and goodness
according to Christianity, had become a marketable commodity, to be
sold on the one hand and bought on the other, on as favourable terms
as buyer or seller could obtain. The rewards of the unseen world
were treated just as an European government, in our own day, sells
farms and settlements in a distant colony. This excessive and in-
terested * other-worldliness ' required, men thought, to have its founda-
tions closely examined. Hence arose numberless enquiries as to the
nature of the soul, its relation to the physical organization, what
reasonable grounds existed for predicating its immortality, etc. For
some time this formed the main topic of lectures in all the Italian
universities. We are told that whenever a new professor at any of these
seats of learning prepared to address his hearers for the first time, no
matter what the subject was which he had appointed for the purpose,
he was met by the clamorous demand, * Tell us about the soul. 7 ' A

1 C. Bartholmess, in Diet, de Science Philosophiques, Art. ' Pomponace.' Renan
says, ' Les discussions sur l'immortalite de Tame etaient a l'ordre du jour a la

1 98 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

very small discussion on such a topic enabled his audience to test
his opinions, the manner in which they had been formed, and the
degree in which they were influenced by purely ecclesiastical con-
siderations. On minds so excited the treatise of Pomponazzi operated
like a spark on a prepared train. Itself the expression of profound and
powerful feelings, it gave them an additional momentum and exten-
sion, as well as provided them with a standpoint from which the
whole matter might be discussed de novo.

Turn we now to the treatise. A single glance enables us to per-
ceive that, whatever the novelty and freedom of its conclusions, it is,
in form, rigidly scholastic. It has its full quota of the ponderous
argumentation, puerile distinctions and subtle refinements, which
characterize generally the productions of the schoolmen. Some
writers are offended at this mediseval formalism. Knowing that Pom-
ponazzi is a man of modern intellect and sympathies, and that his
conclusions, mainly, are novel, they seem to have expected that his
method and style would also have been those of a modern philoso-
phical exposition. But such persons forget that at first new ideas
are generally best presented, so far as possible, under the form and
dress of the old; and the methods of scholasticism, imperfect and
antiquated as we should now consider them, yet contained enough
valid reasoning and candid treatment to justify, at all events for the
time, their adoption. Even the early Protestant Reformers found it
expedient to put their new wine into the old bottles of the school-
men, until the prejudice of those who had been so long accustomed to
such drinking vessels should have ceased, and new bottles better
suited for the purpose couldbe devised.

cour de Leon X. 7 Averroes, p. 863. So Gabriel Naude, 'L'ltalie est pleine de
libertins et d'Athees et de gens qui ne croyent rien ; et neanmoins le nombre
de ceux qui ont ecrit de l'immortalit£ de Tame est presque infini.' — Naudceana,
p. 46. Compare also Vanini, * Alii vero etsi ob metum Hispanicse et Italic®
Inquisitionis ore connteantur (i.e. animi immortalitatem) operibus tamen ipsis
abnegare non erubescunt. Plerosque enim, quo sunt doctiores, litteratioresque,
eo magis Epicuream insectari vitam vidimus, quod nullius sane religionis ar-
gumentum est. 1 — Amphitheatrum, etc. p. 152. It is clear that these discussions
on immortality did not tend to confirm it in the popular creed. The Italian
speculation of the fifteenth century is marked by a strong disbelief in the exis-
tence of a world beyond the grave, and this decadence of the doctrine of im-
mortality is accompanied by two other phenomena, the one moral the other
artistic. The first is the stress on fame and glory as affording the chief im-
pulse to all heroic actions and noble lives ; the second is the enormous and
elaborate tombs and monuments devised by the great to perpetuate their me-
mories — men thus proving in their very denial of immortality the irrepres-
sible power of the instinct to which it is primarily due. See on the latter point,
Jacob Burckhardt's Oeschichte der Renaissance in It alien, p. 265.

General Causes and Leaders. 199

You would not thank me, I am sure, for introducing you into the
thorny labyrinth of dialectics of which Pomponazzi's treatise mainly
consists, nor is it necessary: for by noticing a few of its salient points
you will have no difficulty in apprehending the merits of the argu-
ment, and of the conclusions of its author. 1 The treatise is partly
critical and partly didactic. The critical portion discusses the
opinions that have been held as to the nature of the soul by Plato,
Aristotle, Averroes, and Thomas Aquinas. These and other authori-
ties are so placed in juxtaposition that their contradictory expositions
seem to refute each other. But Pomponazzi does not disguise his
preference for Aristotle, and Aquinas, and their mode of discussing
the question from a natural history point of view ; nor does he con-
ceal his aversion to the Pantheistic leanings of Plato and Averroes.
The authority to which he chiefly defers is Aristotle's well-known
treatise De Anima. In this work are examined the functions of the
soul, and the question is mooted how far these functions are connected
with and dependent on the physical organization, and how far they
are independent of it. Though Aristotle does not decide the question
very distinctly, 2 he betrays a marked inclination towards a necessary
connexion between the bodily organism and the faculties, intellec-
tual as well as animal, which pertain to it. Pomponazzi may be said
to build his own doctrine upon the lines furnished to him by this
work of Aristotle, yet with no small independence of thought and
method of his own. He maintains, for instance, in direct opposition
to the teaching of his master, and not in complete conformity with
his own, the creation of human souls.

Coming to his own doctrine : Man, according to Pomponazzi, stands
upon the confines of both the material and spiritual worlds, and thus
partakes of the nature of each. For there exist in the universe three
modes of being, viz. 1. The separate or abstract intelligence, which
has no need of organisms or matter of any kind. 2. The souls of
brutes, which have need of matter. 3. Human souls, which partly
have need of matter and partly have not — needing it as an object,
but not as a subject. 8 These three grades are reproduced in every

1 Cf. Prof. L. Ferri, La Psicologia di Pietro Pomponazzi. The chapter of
his commentary headed, 'Utrum anima sit immortalis secundum Aristo-
telem ' (p. 206, etc.), is a brief summary of the argument of the larger treatise.

8 See Aristotle, De Anima, ill. ch. 5 ; Gf. Brande's Aristotle, ii. p. 1197.

8 'Hoc stante dicimus quod in genere cognoscentium duo reperiuntur ex-
trema et unum medium, horum autem extremorum unum est intelligent ia,
quae in intelligendo et cognosce ndo neque indiget corpore ut subjecto, neque
ut objecto, veluti notum est ; alterum vero eitremum est anima bestialis cui
proprium est indigere corpore ut subjecto et ut objecto. Medius autem est
homo qui rationales existit. Quare de his duabus proprietatibus medio modo

200 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

individual man in the form : 1. Of the speculative intellect, by which
he creates science, and is like God. 2. The active intellect, by means
of which he is concerned with material things, and creates the arts.
3. The practical intellect, by which a man fulfils his merely animal
part in the world.

You will perceive then that the human soul, being partly Divine
and partly animal, partly dependent on a material organism and
partly not, is thereby asserted to be partly mortal and partly immor-
tal ; or, to put Pomponazzi's distinction in the scholastic phraseology
which he employs, the soul is absolutely mortal (simpliciter mortalis),
and relatively immortal (immortalis secundum quid). This very
delicate distinction may thus be, somewhat crudely, rendered: —
Naturally and inherently the human soul is mortal, but accidentally,
or by peculiarity of function, or circumstances, it may be immortal.
This argument of course involves the inseparability of the intellective
soul from the organization, which Pomponazzi, after Aristotle and
the schoolmen, defines as its form. He gives reasons for this indis-
cerptibility, which Professor Ferri thus summarises, 1 and which will

(serve to show you the kind of proof which was regarded as conclusive
on the subject not only by Pomponazzi, but by all the scholastically
trained minds of his age. The dependance of the intellect (or intel-
- lective soul) upon matter is necessary, according to Pomponazzi, for
four principal reasons.

1. Because matter, undetermined, and regarded as a potentiality, is
the genetic principle of all forms.

2. Because matter defined and determined as an organic body, is
the sine qua non of the existence of the soul, as its true form.

3. Because there is no plurality of substantial forms in man, but
an unity of form and nature.

4. Because the necessity of considering the universal in the par-
ticular, the idea in the imagined picture, the intelligible in the

I sensible, proves that the functions of the intellect, in themselves
. spiritual, cannot be exercised without the organization.

Though somewhat obscured by dialectical intricacy, it is obvious
that the argument amounts to a denial of Immortality as maintained
by the Christian Church. This conclusion was drawn by his con-
temporaries immediately after the publication of the treatise. Nor
was it denied by Pomponazzi himself; who confessed that as a Chris-
tian he believed, as a philosopher he did not believe it ; according to

debet participare; verum nullum potest inter illas extremas proprietates
assignari medium, nisi non indigere ut subjecto et indigere ut objecto. Quare hoc
erit proprium animi human i.' — Apol.^ Ed. Venice, 1524, fol. 53.
1 La Puicologia, etc., pp. 69, 70.

General Causes and Leaders. 201

the maxim of ' twofold truth ' we have already discussed. 1 No doubt,
this paradoxical credo may sometimes be credited with sincerity,
though of a perverse kind ; but in the case of Pomponazzi the religious
belief seems adopted merely to divert attention from the extent and
preponderance of philosophical skepticism. For not only does his
reasoning on other subjects, when Aristotle comes into collision with
ecclesiastical dogma, betray a skeptical tendency, but on this very
point of the future existence of the soul he reasons as if he thought he
had established, not its immortality, but its mortality. While, there-
fore, he professes to oscillate between philosophy and theology, his
subsequent proceedings indicate a conviction that he has not only
crossed the Rubicon of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, but has burnt his
boats. What I mean is, that having denied immortality on grounds
of psychology, he proceeds to argue that the belief is not needed as an
appeal and support to practical ethics ; at least in the case of cultured
and thoughtful persons. Pomponazzi is indeed the first Christian
writer who maintains, on grounds of reason and philosophy, the
principle of disinterested and unconditional morality ; and though of
itself the principle does not necessarily involve a doubt of future
existence, yet in his case, with the corroboration afforded by his
usual attitude to difficult or mysterious dogmas, its ulterior signifi-
cance, in a negative direction, cannot be disregarded. Nothing can
be clearer, and in my judgment more convincingly urged, than his
expositions of this subject. From the standpoint of Christian
stoicism of the loftiest kind, he maintains that * the essential reward
of virtue is virtue itself, that which makes a man happy ; the punish-
ment of the vicious is vice, than which nothing can be more wretched
and unhappy.' 2 This award is involved in what we should now call
the moral order of the universe, but was then known as l the essence
of things.' Other awards are accidental, and therefore inferior. ' For
when a reward is conferred by accident, essential good seems to be
diminished, nor does it remain in its perfection. Suppose e.g. one
man acts virtuously without hope of reward, another on the con-
trary, with such a hope, the act of the second is not held so virtuous
as that of the first ; wherefore he is more essentially rewarded whose
reward does not accrue to him by accident.' From this * ethical,
sublime ' point of view, the question of the future existence or non-
existence of the soul becomes of comparatively small importance. To
use his own words, ' whether the soul be mortal or immortal, death

1 See Evenings with the Skepties, vol. ii. p. 18.

* 'Prsemium essentiale virtutis est ipsamet virtus, qu» hominem felicem
facit. . . . Poena namque vitiosi est ipsuin vitium, quo nihil miserius
nihil infelicius esse potest.' — De Immortal., chap. xiv.

202 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

•

must be despised ; and by no means must virtue be departed from, no
matter what happens after death. 1 Whatever be our opinion of
r Pomponazzi, and some of his teachings, it is impossible to withhold
/ our approval from sentiments so wholesome and nobly unselfish. We
^ shall find similar views in the case of more than one of our remaining
skeptics ; and had better postpone the consideration of their practical
bearings until we come to discuss Peter Charron. Probably the con-
clusions of Pomponazzi, as well as undoubtedly those of Charron, as
to absolute morality, were determined not' only by speculative con-
siderations regarding a future life, but also by the practical need
which the debased Christianity of their time suggested. They had
to face the portentous fact that the future rewards and punishments
of the Christian Church had become utterly ineffectual as preserva-
tives of, or stimulants to, morality among its chief ministers, as well
as in the very citadel of Christendom itself. 1 We can hardly wonder
that Pomponazzi concludes, from the increasing torpor of the Chris-
tian faith, that its end was approaching. 2 This might be called a
fair inference from the moral conditions of the problem, and was
destined to find a sort of fulfilment in the Protestant Reformation.
But the prognostication, which was a favourite speculation of the
age, was originally based upon astrological signs and portents ; 3 for
Pomponazzi, like Cardan, and our own Roger Bacon, was a firm

1 'Neque universaliter viri impuri ponunt mortalitatem, neque univer-
saliter temperati immortalitatem : nam manifesto videmus multos proves homines
credere, verum ex passionibus seduci; multos etiam viros sanctos et justos
sciraus mortalitatem animarum possuisse.' — De Immortal., p. 119.

* 'Quare et nunc in fide nostra omnia frigescunt, miracula desinunt nisi
con fie ta et simulata, nunc propinquus videtur esse finis.' — De Incant., 12, p.
286.

8 Few mediaeval speculations are more curious than this 'Horoscope of
Religions. 1 It was first propounded by the Arab astronomer, Albumazar,
who made the origin of all religions and prophets depend upon certain plane-
tary conjunctions. Christianity, e.g. depended on the conjunction of Jupiter
with Mercury. It was held that the conjunction of Jupiter with the Moon
would be the signal for the complete abolition of all religious beliefs. Albu-
mazar carried his art to such perfection that by the horoscope of each religion
he was able to determine the proper colour of its vestments. Had he exercised
his calling in our own days, it is conceivable that English ritualists might
have recourse to him instead of to the * Ornaments Rubric. 1 Cf . Kenan, Averroes,
pp. 826-7 ; Bacon, Opus Maj., pp. 160-170 ; Emile Charles's Roger Bacon, pp.
47-48. It may be added that the recorded visit of Chaldsean astrologers to the
cradle of the Infant Jesus appeared to give an authoritative sanction to the
application of astrology to Christianity. As the star in the east announced
the birth of the new religion, so a similar cometary appearance or conjunction
of planets would portend, thought the mediaeval astrologers, its final extinc-
tion. Comp. chapter on Vanini below.

General Causes and Leaders. 203

believer in the influence of the stars upon existing religions and
their destinies. Moreover, he found another argument for an ap-
proaching convulsion and regenerating movement in Christianity, in
Aristotle's belief that philosophy must from time to time be renewed
and make a fresh start

But we must, I think, admit that Pomponazzi's view of religion A
its sanctions and its objects, was of a partial and imperfect nature. J
Religion was to him a synonym for legisl ation : indeed he frequently
adopts the class-name which Averroes had assigned to religions, viz.
Laws (Leges). He was apparently aware that his lofty Stoicism,
however much it might commend itself to the philosopher and
thinker, was ill adapted for more general use. This he expressed by
comparing the ignorant and unthinking to apes, who will only carry
their burdens by dint either of coaxing or beating. 1 From this point
of view he considered the rewards and punishments of a future life
as useful to the legislator, to encourage or coerce those who were not
amenable to more disinterested arguments. Indeed he accounts for
the wide-spread prevalence of those beliefs, in other religions besides
Christianity, by the hypothesis that legislators had chosen them for \
purely political purposes ; and lays down the principle that the ruler /
may adopt any religion or religious dogma, irrespective of its truth,
if it seems fitted to serve his purpose as an instrument of morality
or social order. 8 Nor does he limit this permission to cases where a
religious truth, as, e.g n immortality, is incapable of demonstration ;
but he thinks it a praiseworthy act on the part of a ruler to invent
parables, myths and fables in order to allure his subjects to orderly
and right conduct. In his dealings with humanity, the philosophic
legislator must have regard to the nature and constitution of man.
This is so materialized and brutish, in most cases, that the only treat-
ment available is that which nurses and doctors employ towards
children and the sick. It cannot be denied that Pomponazzi's opinion
of man, both as an intellectual and moral being, is contemptuous and
cynical to an extreme degree ; and places him in close juxta-position
with Machiavelli. Pomponazzi's intellect, like that of the Florentine
Secretary, was of the cold, un impassioned, legal kind, which ignores
all the more deeply seated feelings and impulses of our nature, and
is inherently incapable of estimating the purely religious or emotional
side of human character, whether moral or intellectual. As an in-

1 De Immort.y chap. 14 ; De Fato, lib. Hi. chap. 16.

* ' Respiciens legislator pronitatem viarum ad malum, intendens common i
bono, sanxit animam esse immortalem, non curans de veritate, Bed tan turn de
probitate, ut inducat homines ad virtutem, neque accusandus est politicus.'
— De Immort., chap. xiv.

204 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

stance of this incapacity on the part of Pomponazzi, I may observe
that he classes religious faith with imagination, which, though founded
on illusion, is nevertheless productive of wonderful effects. The
strength of either faculty he holds to be in direct proportion to the ig-
norance and want of cultivation of its possessor ! He however makes
a concession to the moral nature of man which he denies to his intel-
lect. Though no man can attain truth, a man may, though very rarely,
attain ethical perfection ; the percentage of good men to the rest of
mankind he estimates to be about one in a thousand. It is on this side
that our human obligation lies. No man is obliged to be learned or
an artist, but every man is compelled morally to acquire, or at least to
strive for, so much ethical excellence as his reason suggests to him.

It is quite in harmony with Pomponazzi's contempt for the vulgar,
and his rule to treat them as children, as well as being a sort of
practical corollary from his doctrine of Twofold Truth, that he asserts
a philosophical * Disci plina Arcani ' — advocating the necessity of
esoteric teaching incommunicable to the many. * These things/ he
says, speaking of some of his advanced speculations, ' are not to be
communicated to common people because they are incapable of re-
ceiving these secrets (arcanorum). We must beware even of hold-
ing discourse concerning them with ignorant priests.' For this reason
he divides men into philosophers and religious, in harmony with his
classification of divergent truths, the latter of whom are opposed to
the former as fools are to the wise, * since philosophers alone are the
gods of the earth, and differ so much from all other men, of whatever
rank and condition, as genuine men differ from those painted on
canvas.'

The self-same argument on which Pomponazzi founded his doubt

I of immortality, is the basis of his belief in the powerlessness of the

reason to attain or comprehend truth. 'The human intellect,' he

says, * cannot comprehend abstract things, 1 being as it is of a dual

nature, and placed between brutish and abstract intelligences ; it can

only perceive by means of the senses, and for that reason cannot

apprehend itself. Hence it is unable to obtain a knowledge of the

r universal as it exists in itself and simply; and can only do so by

l means of the particular ; 2 or, as he elsewhere puts it, in every

1 'Anima intellectiva est naturro ancipitis inter bruta et abstracta, non
intelligit nisi cum adminiculo sensuum juxta illud: — "necesse est quem-
cunque intelligentem phantasmata speculari." ' — Ferri, Pxicologia, pp. 21, 98.

'Non est credendum quod intellectus possit ea (abstracta) recipere, quia
intellectus est debilis, ita ut non possit tantum lumen sustinere, ideo non
movetur ab ipsis : et propter boc poet® fingunt quod Juppiter quando aocede-
bat ad aliquam mulierem, deponebat suam divinitatem ! ' — Op. cit., p. 89.

2 Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 171. 4 Unde (Intellectus) sic indigens cor-

General Causes and Leaders. 205

abstract cognition there must be some material iddlon, or individual,
by which alone we are able to form it. You will notice that this
denial of abstract knowledge, and the assertion of its evolution from \
particular objects of sensation, assimilates Pomponazzi to the Nom- /
inalists, and to Abelard. The intellect is thus bound up in its
existence and in its action with matter, and with senses which are
material ; and intellectual perception of any kind, apart from and
independent of material conditions and surroundings, is inconceiv-
able. He rejects even the theory that our conditions of knowledge
in a future life may possibly differ from what they are now; for
whereas we are now dependent on material aids, it is conceivable .
that hereafter we may not need them ; and so doing he appears to J
me guilty of unphilosophical arbitrariness, as well of undermining/
his own classification of beings. For if abstract intellect cannot be
conceived apart from matter, what becomes of the Divine intelli-
gence, as well as that of man himself, of whose soul it forms a por-
tion ? Nothing is in reality left but pure materialism. 1

That a work whose conclusion, stripped of all disguise, was the
essential corporeity of the human * intellective soul/ should have
excited a vehement controversy was of course to be expected. We
are told that both one and the other of the only two possible ways of
interpreting ' immortality ' which Pomponazzi could have adopted,
had already been forbidden by the Church. 2 But the clerical instinct
was quite shrewd enough to apprehend danger from Pomponazzi's
free-spoken utterances, without any suggestion from authority. The
clamour began, in Venice, where the clergy were stirred up by a
Minorite friar. The Doge was invoked with success, for he ordered
the book to be burnt. But burning a book was but an insignificant
triumph for those who would gladly have burnt the author. Accord-
ingly the Pope was appealed to ; but, by the kindly offices of Cardinal
Bembo, the appeal was frustrated. Kanke indeed quotes an authority
to show that Leo X. did subsequently order Pomponazzi to retract ;
but if so, the command was never enforced. 3

pore ut objecto, neque simpliciter universale cognoscere potest, sed semper
universale in singulari speculator, ut unusquisque in seipso experiri potest/ —
De Immorty chap. ix.

1 Fiorentino (Pomponazzi, p. 178) thus states his own conclusions from Pom-
ponazzi's premisses, ' Da quelle premesse per6 conseguitava necessariamente
la mortalitd delV anima umana, non potendo ella sopravvivere alia corruzione
del corpo, nel quale si fondamentava tutto il suo pensiero.' Comp. on this
point Bartholmess in Diet de Set, Phil.

* Bartholmess, loc. cit.

8 On the part which the Pope took in this matter, and which is referred to
above (see p. 12), some light seems to be thrown by the dedication of Niphus's

2o5 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

As the stake was not forthcoming, recourse was had to the printing
press. A controversialist of some note, Augustine Niphus, was desired
by Bishop Fiandino, once a friend of Pomponazzi, but soon to become
the most implacable of his enemies, to write an answer to the treatise
on Immortality. Meanwhile Pomponazzi again took up his pen to
indite an Apology. 1 In this work, published in 1518, he declaims in
bitter and sarcastic terms on the ignorance, vice and hypocrisy of the
clergy. His enemies were not a whit behind him in plainness of
speech ; and what they could not effect by the more refined instrumen-
tality of wit and sarcasm, they tried to accomplish by vulgar vitupera-
tion and low abuse. What was the effect we might ask of these
attacks, which were continued with slight interruption to the close of
his life, on Pomponazzi's standpoint? . . . Did he, for that or any other
reason, modify it in subsequent writings. His two most recent critics,
Professors Fiorentino and Ferri, differ upon this point. The former
supposes that Pomponazzi's account of the nature of the intellective-
soul laid down in the De Immortalitate, is distinctly developed in a
materialistic direction in his Apologia, and in another work bearing
the .title of De Nutritione.* Professor Ferri denies this, and supports
his denial with an elaborate and, to my mind, conclusive argument. 3

book, in which the author says, expressly, ' hunc libellum ad te scripsi, et sub
amplitudine Tui Sanctissimi nominis publicandum esse curavi.' The author
may be permitted to say that he has this rare work of Niphus, together with
the most important of his other writings, in his library.

1 This work, Apclogie Libri Ires, together with the two following, Contradic-
tors tractatus doctufsimus, and Defensorium autoris, are the most valuable of
all his writings for forming an estimate of his character. They are part of
the collection entitled, Tractatus Acutisrimi utillimi, etc. Venetiis, 1525.

* Cf. Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, pp. 172-175. The development is thus
succinctly described by the learned author in his paper oxj • Luigi Ferri,' in
the Qiornale Napoliiano, April, 1877, p. 274 : — ' parla prima della concomitanza
dell' intelletto ; poi della probabilitd che si sviluppi dalla materia ; in fine della
necessild che se ne sviluppi,' he adds, ' E quando parla di semplice concomitanza,
propende a distinguere la natura dell' anima intellettiva dalle altri animi
inferiori, dalla sensitiva, e dalla vegetativa.'

8 See his Psicologia, etc., p. 64. The controversy on this subject has recently
been continued in Italian Philosophical Reviews, though with a degree of
warmth out of all proportion to the intrinsic importance of the point at issue.
In the Giornal* Napoliiano for April, 1877 (pp. 269-803), Prof. Fiorentino
reiterates his original statement, supporting it by additional arguments. He
points out that Pomponazzi (see preceding note), distinguished between the
nature and functions of the intellective-soul, and says that it is in respect
of the latter (not the former) that there is a ' perceptible development in
Pomponazzi's views. Professor Ferri rejoins in La Filosofta di Scuole Italiana,
for June, 1877 (vol. xv. p. 895), denying that Pomponazzi makes such a
distinction between the nature and functions of the intellective-soul. He
fully adopted, says Professor Ferri, the scholastic maxim, ' operari sequitur

General Causes attd Leaders. 207

The only interest the question — one of extreme intricacy — has for us
is to show that whatever doubt may exist as to the stationary or
progressive attitude of Pomponazzi on the subject of immortality, it
certainly was not retrogressive. His was not one of those pliant
characters which are ready to yield to controversial clamour. It is
true he had powerful patrons in Cardinals Bembo and Gonzaga, and
in the authorities of his own university ; but his supreme law and
source of confidence came from within — the strong conviction that
whatever betide, he must follow the dictates of reason and conscience.
Reason was, in fact, the only approach to infallibility which he ]
acknowledged. Reason, or intellect, was superior to any human/
authority, even to that of Aristotle — greatest of philosophers as he pro-
claimed him. 1 On this point he took his stand in his defensive works,
the spirit of which, and for that matter of Pomponazzi 's whole life
and teaching, may be exemplified by an extract quoted by Fiorentino
from his reply to Niphus. Having said that our will should give
way to faith, but that, the will is one thing, the intellect another, he
continues : ' But other things are not in our power because, given the
premisses, if the consequence follows it is not in our power to dissent
from the conclusion. Wejnay do without reasoning altogether ; but
we cannot grant the antecedent and deny the consequent. Heaven
forbid that an honest man, and still more a Christian, should have one*
thing in his heart and another on his lips. Hence in the performance
of my duty as interpreter of Aristotle, as I am convinced his language
should be understood, and not in a contrary manner, ought I to lie by,
interpreting everything differently from my real sentiment? But if
it be said — the hearers are scandalized at it. Be it so, they are not
obliged to listen to me, or to forbid my teaching. I neither wish to
lie, nor to bo wanting to my true conviction/ 9

The indomitable firmness expressed in these and similar terms
received a welcome support from the Bolognese authorities. The
most ancient of the Italian universities remained true to her sympathy

esse.' ' The functions depend on the nature' — (p. 401). It seems clear, to an
impartial student of Pomponazzi, that in the case of so subtle a thinker, a
controversy depending on refinements so minute may easily become intermin-
able ; and must in any case be inconclusive.

1 ' Magna est Aristotelis auctoritas, magnus est etiam rationis impetus.' Gf.
Ferri, p. 62. In another place he says ' Magna est auctoritas Alexandri, major
Aristotelis, maxima vero est veritatis.' On one occasion, when his university
were celebrating with great festivities the election of Charles V., Pomponazzi
declared from his professorial chair, ' Mallem esse Aristotelis quam Imperator
nunc beatus de quo fiunt letitisB.' Gomp. Fiorentin in Gior. Nap. % Agosto,
1878, pp. 121-124.

9 Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 54. Comp. Defensorium, chap. xxix.

208 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

for freedom, and to her claim of being 'the mother of' Italian
' Research. 1 * Pomponazzi had proposed to accept a professorship at
Pisa, but the Bolognese refused to hear of his removal. He was then
the most celebrated of all the Italian professors. His fame drew
crowds of foreign students to their city. The Bolognese magistrates
were not disposed to relinquish so much glory, and probably advantage
as well, for the sake of a little clerical excitement. Hence, instead of
dismissing him, they confirmed him in his professorship for a period
of eight years, and increased his salary to 1,600 ducats. The sister
universities were jealous of their possession of * Little Peter,' and
would fain have attracted him each to herself. It is indeed an
instructive example both of the freedom then enjoyed in the Italian
universities, and of their anti-clerical sympathies, that while the

(clergy were most vehement in their outcry against Pomponazzi, no less
than three universities were contending among themselves which
should possess him. Pomponazzi, however, would not forsake her
who had truly approved herself a ' mother of studies ' to the poor
persecuted philosopher ; and he continued to occupy his professor's
chair at Bologna, and to gather round him the most intellectual and
free-thinking of the youth of Italy during the brief remainder of his
life.

Although the treatise Be Immortalitate, and the works he wrote to
defend it, represent the most conspicuous part of his career as a philo-
sophical teacher and writer, he published a few other works of a novel
and startling nature, which deserve a passing notice at our hands.

In 1520 he published a noteworthy treatise, with the title Concern-
ing Incantations, or the Causes of marvellous effects in Nature. 2 The
occasion of this work was a number of enquiries put to him by a
doctor of Mantua, respecting the. cause of certain wonderful cures
which he had apparently effected by charms and incantations.
Acting upon the suggestion thus brought before him, Pomponazzi enters
upon a long dissertation of natural wonders. He takes the power of
demons for example. As a consistent Peripatetic he could not allow
the operation of such intermediate agencies in the production of
natural effects. 'It would be ridiculous and absurd, 7 says he, 'to
despise what is visible and natural in order to have recourse to an
invisible cause, the reality of which is not guaranteed to us by any
solid probability.' On the other hand he dared not deny that such

1 As the mother-university of Italy, Bologna inscribed the legends on some
of her ancient coins, 'Bononia docet,' and 'Bononia mater studiorum.' Cf.
Muratori, Antiq. Ital., ii. p. 664.

2 This is perhaps the best known of Pomponazzi's works, next, of course, to
the De Immortaliiate, It forms the second in the Basle Edition of his collected
works.

General Causes and Leaders. 209

mysterious powers both good and bad occupied a large space in the
teaching of the Church ; he therefore again takes refuge in his old
argument of ' double truth.' As a Peripatetic he refuses to believe in
the existence of angels or spirits, as a Christian and a believer in the
indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Church, he is compelled to admit
the existence of such beings. 1 Such is the conclusion of his argument ;
but in concluding it he evinces a degree of clearness and boldness,
irony and sarcasm, disdain for the superstitions of his time and
anticipation of greater enlightenment in the future which is truly
remarkable. Not that he openly and directly runs counter to the
dogmas of the Church, but by adducing collateral considerations of a
scientific and natural kind he seeks to diminish their exclusively
miraculous import. As a Christian e.g. he must not refuse to admit the
existence of such supernatural agencies as demons ; nevertheless he
enquires, how far they are capable of producing those effects which
are attributed to them. He finds that being pure spirits they can
only operate on matter by material means. He therefore imagines, of
course ironically, that spirits who perform bodily cures on man must
go about with bottles of medicine, varieties of plasters and unguents,
like so many ghostly apothecaries.

Absolute freedom from the superstitious ideas of his time we of
course have no right to expect. We cannot therefore be surprised if
Fomponazzi transfers to plants, trees, stones,, etc., the occult properties
and magical powers which many of his contemporapies asoribed to
demons. As authorities for this belief^ he refers, to Pliny, Galen and
others ; and though his opinions on this subject are quite as strange
and superstitious as those of Cornelius Agrippa, we may remember
that all progress is relative, and that the step from demons and such
supernatural agencies to plants, animals and stones, represents a
decided and appreciable advance in knowledge and scientific attain-
ments. Miracles our skeptic treats in a somewhat similar manner.
Both as an Aristotelian and as an independent investigator he is fully
satisfied that all effects in nature are produced by constant and
invariable laws. Miraoles therefore cannot be opposed to nature.
That is not their true definition. Miracles are the rare events of
nature, and their extra-natural character is an inference from that

1 The Church is also to decide between genuine and false miraoles. ' Quod
vero aliqua talia sint miracula, aliqua vero ejusdem species non sint, sufficit
ecolesise catholic® auctoritas que Spiritu Sancto et verbo Dei regulatur ' {De
Incant., c. vi.), on which M. Franck comments * L'ironie est manifesto et il faut
avoir la candeur de 1'age d'or pour ecrire avec Hitter aux professions de foi
chretiennes de Pomponace ' (op. cit. p. 121). But this estimate of M, Franck
seems just as exaggerated on the one side as Bitter's on the other. See infra.

VOL. L ^

2io The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

rarity. 1 Here as elsewhere he will not openly contradict the dogma

he is discussing, he will rather reconcile it to science by modifying

its definition. At the same time he regards true miracles, i.e. rare

/ natural phenomena occurring periodically, of such importance that he

[ anticipates the end of Christianity from the fact of their having quite

\ ceased in the Church. As for simulated miracles, the marvellous

effects for example ascribed to sacred relics, he criticises them from

the point of view of a skeptical physician. He holds that whatever

efficacy is truly ascribed to them is due to the subjective feeling of

faith on the part of those who are benefited ; and that if they were

the bones of dogs instead of holy men they would produce the same

results,*

As might be expected he treats the miracles of the Bible with more
respect. He is persuaded that many of those recorded in the Law of
Moses and the Law (i.e. Religion) of Christ were really natural
events, contemplated and described by ignorant and superstitious
people. But he admits this cannot be affirmed of all. Among those
which resist the solvent agency of his rationalizing analysis, he
especially names the resurrection of Lazarus, the healing of the man
blind from his birth, the feeding of so many thousands with five
loaves and two fishes, the healing of the lame man by Peter and John,
etc., of which he says they cannot be reduced to natural causation,
nor were they performed by any created agency. 2 All these cases
therefore afforded scope for his bi-partite faith. As a Christian he
received them ; as a natural philosopher, pledged to a belief in the
irreversible laws of the universe, they transcended both his know-
ledge and belief. They remained in his intellect, with other truths
of the same kind, like an insoluble precipitate, resisting the action of
all the chemical substances his knowledge enabled him to apply to
their solution.

In the same year in which he published his work on Incantations
he finished another long treatise — his last important contribution to
Philosophy — consisting of five books, and treating of such profound

1 Miracles, he says, ' pro tanto dicuntur miracula, quia insueta et rarissime
facta, et non secundum communem naturae cursum, sed in longissimis periodis.'
De Incant., pp. 294-5. One of the most illustrious of Pomponazzi's countrymen
in modern times, Gioberti, seems to have adopted a similar definition and
explanation of miracles. Cf. Professor Ferri, Essai eur VHUtoire de la
Philosophic en Italieau 19 *•*• Steele, ii. 188.

* ( Medici ac philosophi hoc sciunt, quantum operentur fides et imaginatio
sanandi et non sanandi. TJnde si essent ossa canis, et tanta et talis de eis
haberetur imaginatio, non minus subsequeretur sanitas.'— De Incant., chap. xii.,
Opera. Ed. Basle, p. 282.

8 De Incant.j cap. vi., op. cit., pp. 87, 88,

General Causes and Leaders. 2 1 1

questions as Fate, Providence, Free-will, etc. His object in writing
this work is instructive, as it gives us an insight into the zeal and
earnestness of his intellectual character. He tells us that he under-
took those expositions as so many studies of the different questions
he discusses in them, to satisfy himself as well as to instruct others. 1
In this treatise, as in others of his writings, he asserts with consider-
able force, but also with true philosophical discrimination, the
doctrine of Human Liberty. He makes it the absolute source and
condition of all morality. Predestination, which he defined as the
relation of Providence to the individual, as Fate describes his relation
to the universe, he therefore so interprets as to leave to man his full
liberty of action ; and consequently his sense of moral responsibility.
He traces this freedom of action also, on its Divine side, in the large-
ness of the operations of Nature, making what assumes to us the
appearance of evil to be the inevitable consequence of its infinite scope
and variety of action. He endeavours to reconcile Human Free-will
with Divine Omniscience, but has in the last resort to allow their
incompatibility. He admits that Aristotle denies special providence,
and as a philosopher his sympathies are with his master ; but as a
Christian he opposes Aristotle, because general providence must
needs consist of particular instances. In short, Pomponazzi's position
with regard to all those questions which are partly concerned with
theology and partly with the phenomena of nature and humanity,
is precisely that which we might have expected. He approaches the
question from the side of Natural Philosophy and Reason; as an
Aristotelian and Professor of Medicine, rather than as a Theologian.
He discusses and decides it, if no dogmatic considerations intervene,
entirely from that point of view. When however, as mostly hap-
pened, almost every step in the argument has some relation to the
doctrines of the Church, then he proceeds more warily. If, by slightly
modifying its usual definition, the dogma concerned may be wholly
or partially reconciled with the dictates of reason and nature,
Pomponazzi adopts that course. If, on the other hand, they are so
divergent and irreconoileable that the affirmation of the one constitutes
the denial of the other, then Pomponazzi has recourse to 'double
truth.' 3 But this alternative he only adopts after every conceivable

1 ' Neque enim tarn gr&nde opus aggredi, illud meum fuit consilium, scilicet,
ut apud Bihliopolaa libri nomen meum celebrantes haberenter : sed ad versus
ignorantiam meam murmurantis conscientise scrip turn ad hoc me compulit. 1
— De Fato, etc., L, Proemium. Op. cit. t p. 83a.

* The following quotations will serve to explain more fully Pomponazzi's
position as a maintainer of twofold truth. He approves e*g % of the distinction
of Albertus Magnus, who said that he reasoned on philosophical questions as

212 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

method of reconciling the foes has been exhausted ; and in order to
avert what is to him the most immoral and unjustifiable of all human
actions, i.e. the flat contradiction of his philosophical conscience.
Hence the numerous antinomies and dualisms, which make up so
much of his intellectual creed, may be said to represent so many
points where the current of his tendencies and convictions is divided
by some dogmatic obstruction. There are intellects which attack
such an obstacle with determination, and being unable to move it
from their path, they lash themselves, like sea-waves against a rock,
into a foam of anger and desperation. Other minds, like deeper
currents, meeting the obstruction, divide themselves, and if possible
flow round it. We already know that such a dichotomy, though
incompatible with intellectual uniformity, is not incompatible with
religious sincerity. We must, I think, conclude that Pompon azzi
was thoroughly sincere. In fact there is too much earnestness and
determination in his character to allow of any other hypothesis. 1
/Like Pascal, he grappled with the problems of the universe with a
/ zeal, I might say with a deadly passion, which is almost appalling
L to witness. Speaking of his earnest attempts to reconcile Divine
omniscience with human liberty and with the remediable evils of the
world, he says, ' These are the things which oppress and embarrass
me, which take away my sleep and almost my senses ; so that I am
a true illustration of the fable of Prometheus, whom, for trying to
steal secretly the fire of heaven, Jupiter bound to a Scythian rock,
and his heart became food for a vulture, which gnawed continually

a philosopher, and on theological questions as a theologian, and declined
* miscere credita cum phisicis.' The dogmas of the Church he regarded as
extraneous necessities, beliefs imposed ah extra, while his own convictions
were self wrought out. The two provinces of thought might be compared to
the differently motived obedience which a man might render to law in the
sense of human ordinance, and in that of equity and inherent justice ; so Pom-
ponazzi says, ' Tantum credite in Philosophic, quantum rationes dictant vobis,
in Theologia credite tantum quantum vobis dictant Theologi.' He acknow-
ledges that his principle of believing contradictions is opposed by Aristotle,
but comforts himself by reflecting that one of them is only verbal, * Dicit
Aristoteles quod nullus corde potest conoedere duo con trad ic tori a, quia
opiniones contradictorise sunt contrarise in intellectu, sed .verbo possumus
concedere, corde autem minime.' See Fiorentino in Oiornale Napolitano, Agosto,
1878, p. 120.

1 On this point most of his critics are fully agreed. Bitter thinks that
Pomponazzi's object, in all his writings, was the reconciliation of science with
the teachings of the Church ; but this was evidently quite a secondary matter
in his estimation. Comp. Ferri, Psicologia, etc. Equally unsustainable is
Hitter's proposition that Pomponazzi's theory of immortality is not incom-
patible with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Comp. Fiorentino,
p. 189.

General Causes and Leaders. 2 1 3

upon it.' And in the same chapter he considers the symbol in its
general application. 'Prometheus is the (true) philosopher, who
because he will know the secrets of God, is devoured by perpetual
cares and cogitations. He is incapacitated from thirst, hunger, sleep,
or from satisfying the most ordinary needs of human life; he is
derided by all, is regarded as a fool and a heretic ; he is persecuted
by inquisitors ; he becomes a laughing-stock to the multitude. These
forsooth are the gains of philosophers. This is their wages.' That
these plaintive utterances describe the trials and difficulties of his
own position is acknowledged by all his critics, and scarcely admits
of doubt. It is impossible to say how far his premature death may
have been hastened by the opposition he encountered from his ecclesi-
astical adversaries, or by the unwearied application with which he set
himself to solve the inscrutable problems of the universe. 1 Probably
both causes contributed to the fatal result. If so, his fate may be
represented under another classical image besides that of Prometheus.
He is a philosophical Laocoon, who perishes in a vain struggle with
the twin serpent-powers — the Inscrutability of the Universe, and the
Dogmatism of the Church.

More than one of Pomponazzi's critics have contended that he was
quite uninfluenced by the Renaissance, considered as a movement of
culture. They point to the defects of his Latin style, to his complete
ignorance of Greek, to his evident want of acquaintance with or
regard for the Belles Lettres. But, in estimating the weight of this
criticism, we must consider two things, (1) Pomponazzi's intellectual
character ; (2) the full meaning of the complex movement which we
designate the Renaissance.

1. First and before all things, Pomponazzi was a thinker — a rational-
istic philosopher. Language was to him merely the vehicle of his
thought, the instrument of his ratiocination. As long as it served
these needful purposes, he did not trouble himself about graces of
style or ornate composition. Yet his Latin, though rude and un-
polished, is not destitute of a certain vigour of its own. His cum-
brous argumentation, and the involved construction of his sentences,
must be ascribed in a great measure to his scholastic training ; partly
also perhaps to a fulness and many-sidedness of thought transcending
his powers of expression. Still his meaning is generally attained
with sufficient distinctness; and his harsh constructions are some-
times agreeably diversified by neat and epigrammatic turns of expres-
sion.

2. Pomponazzi's connexion with the Renaissance can only be

1 Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 68.

214 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

denied by limiting its scope, and ignoring some of its most essential
characteristics. The resurrection of classical literature, and its
effect upon the artistic temperaments and sympathies of Italians,
was only one phase of the movement, and this by no means the most
important. It was not an inherent part of the Renaissance considered
as a movement of thought. It was related to it as the ornamental
setting is related to a precious stone, or as the picturesque flame and
smoke of a volcanic eruption is related to the actual upheavals of the
solid crust of the earth. Pomponazzi's place in the movement is as
the exponent of its profounder and more deeply seated forces. He
represents the craving of the human mind for freedom — the convul-
sive struggle, for life and vital energy, of intellectual and religious
thought, rather than the elegant expression of the former, or the poetry
and imagination that adorned the latter. This, however, is the phase
of the Renaissance which gives it its permanent value, and which
constitutes the main ground of its kinship with modern thought. In
this respect there is a considerable difference between Petrarca and
Pomponazzi. The former may be said to include every phase of the
Renaissance. He represents not only its free tendencies, as a new
effort of thought (though he does not enter so fully as Pomponazzi
V into the heart of the movement), but its highest expression, as a
Vyearning after ideal beauty. Still, it would be clearly unjust to our
skeptic to refuse him his due share in the sum total of the forces
/ which make up the composite whole we call the Renaissance, merely
because he cannot be said to embody a few of its attractive, but,
v for the most part, superficial and evanescent features.

As a thinker of essentially modern spirit, Pomponazzi anticipated
some beliefs and modes of thought which have since his time
acquired greater currency. Though, as a Christian, he detached
Christianity from the other religions of the world, ascribing to it a
value and destiny sui generis; as a Philosopher, he placed it on the
same level with the other ' laws/ as they were called, of Moses, of the
Gentiles, and of Mahomet, just as Boccaccio did in his story of the
Three Rings, or as a modern student of Comparative Religions might
do. He does away also with the distinction between natural and
revealed religion, uniting all the Divine teaching in the universe
in one harmonious whole. He assigns moreover to causation much
of its modern position as the governing principle of all natural pheno-
mena. Nor must we pass unnoticed his catholicity of spirit. Al-
, though, as a philosopher and lecturer on Aristotle, he felt bound to
/ oppose Averroes, there are patent correspondencies between his
\ system and that of the great Arab commentator. Vanini, his own
disciple, said that * Pythagoras would have judged that the soul of

General Causes and Leaders. 2 1 5

Averroes had transmigrated into the body of Pomponazzi,' 1 and it
has been pointed out, that his opinion as to the share of the lawgiver
in promoting the doctrine of Immortality and other religious beliefs —
that the first man came into being by natural causes ; that miracles
are imaginations or wilful deceptions ; that prayer and the worship
of saints and relics are inefficacious; that religion is adapted only
for simple people — are either taken from Averroes, or are deductions
from his teaching. His doctrine of * twofold truth ' is also quite in
harmony with Averroism. 2 But Pomponazzi's chief excellence, in
my estimation, is the noble stand which he makes for pure unselfish
morality. This is the pivot of his system, and his refuge from
complete skepticism. Speculation, he has ascertained by painful "N
experience, is hazardous and uncertain. The mutual conflicts and S
disputations of the great leaders of thought are productive only of
doubt. In his own province of natural, philosophy the case is the
same.* £ He therefore turns to practice. ' At least there can be no )
mistake in virtue, and ethical perfection. To this centre all the
different portions of his system, like the radii of a circle, are made
to converge. He distrusts the doctrine of immortality, among other )
reasons, because in the form it is generally maintained he thinks it
derogatory to virtue. He proclaims human liberty because it is
the indispensable condition of all ethical action. The Church has its
chief value and raison d'etre as a teacher of morality. The State is
a human organization devised to protect and encourage virtue. In
a word, virtue is the supreme law of the universe ; and the climax /
of perfection both in the Divine and human character; and what-
ever organization, ecclesiastical or political, has not this for its sole
aim, or whatever doctrine or dogma does not directly or indirectly
lead to it, Pomponazzi regards as worthless. All things else are '
liable to change : virtue, moral truth and excellence are, like their
Eternal Creator, immutable.

1 ' Petrus Pomponatius Philosophus acutissimus, in cujus corpus, animam
A verrois commigrasse Pythagoras judicasset.' (AmphUhecU, Prov.^ Ex. vi. p* 86,)
See below, the chapter on Vanini. Benan, who places this among the number
of reckless assertions on the part of Vanini, observes that if he had known
anything of Pomponazzi's works, he would have found that for the most part
he opposed Averroes. Still there is, as pointed out in the text, a considerable
amount of similarity in the Teachings of Averroes and Pomponazzi. What
the latter chiefly complained of in Averroes was his obscurity. He says, ' Laudo
doctrinam ejus sad obscuritatem vitupero quia non habet partes expositoris.'
Comp. Prof. Fiorentino in the Giornale Napotitano, Agosto, 1878, p. 117.

* Comp. Benan, Averroes, p. 274, and passim.

8 'In ista enim philosophia Naturali potest unusquisque dicere suo modo,
quia non sunt demonstrationes in istia.' Fiorent., Pietro Pomponazzi, p. 514,
note.

2 1 6 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Little remains to be added on our subject. Pomponazzi's lot was
cast in troublous times. His life synchronizes with some of the most
remarkable events in the early history of Modern Europe. While he
was peacefully lecturing at Padua, Florence was undergoing those
vehement alternations of penitence and licence which mark the
short-lived mission of Savonarola. Luther had already commenced
his campaign against the Papacy. Rumours and portents of im-
minent convulsions were everywhere prevalent. Throughout the
civilized world there was a 'distress of nations with perplexity.' But,
for the most part these nascent forces, which were destined to change
the face of Europe, passed by Pomponazzi unheeded. Like a hermit
whose cell is placed on the side of a volcano, he heard the rumblings
beneath, but was too much absorbed in his studies to note their
purport. His whole existence, as M. Franck observes, was taken up
by his books, his teaching, and his studious contemplation ; so that
one may say of him, as was said of Spinoza, he was ( less a mau than
a thought ' — an impersonal embodiment of intellectual activity.

Pomponazzi died on the 18th of May, 1525. The honour in which
he was held by the University of Bologna is shown by an entry of
that date, in the Register of Doctors, a very unusual circumstance,
we are told, in which he is styled a most excellent Philosopher; and
it is added that ' by his death the University had lost its greatest
ornament.' His disciple and friend, Cardinal Gonzaga, better known
as the future President of the Council of Trent, caused his remains
to be removed to his native Mantua, and erected a monument of
bronze to his memory.

Professor Fiorentino sums up his preliminary account of Pom-
ponazzi's life and works, by a parallel between his death and that of
Socrates, which I here transcribe: — * Socrates on the approach of
death — a martyr for the truth— did not flee from his fate. He did
not wish to escape from the prison in which he was confined. Un-
disturbed, and in all serenity, he fixed his attention on Future Life.
A most beautiful woman appeared to him in a dream, and appointed
him a place in one of the fortunate islands. 1 "Three days hence,
Socrates," she said to him, "you will arrive at fertile Phthia." Hence

1 * La bellissima donna apparsagli in sogno gli da la posta per un' isola for-
tunata,' etc. Comp. Plato, Crilon, and Cicero, De Div., i. xxv. ; but the learned
Professor has mistaken the purport of the original quotation, which is from
the 9th Book of the Iliad, v. 863, and relates primarily to Achilles' anticipa-
tion of returning home. In its secondary application to the approaching fate
of Socrates, it is employed in the sense, so widely distributed, in which death
and the future world are spoken of as ( home/ Gf. Stallbaum's Note, Plato.,
om. Opera, i. 126.

General Causes and Leaders. 217

Socrates resisted all the entreaties of Krito, and contemplated with
firmness, the poisonous draught, and even death itself ; and he talked
with PhaBdo, with Cebes and with Simmias, as with men from
whom he would be parted only for a short time, and with whom there
would afterwards be a common meeting in a place more beautiful
and serene. The aureole of martyrdom, the anticipation of a blissful
futurity soothed the bitterness of parting, and gave the dying Socrates
a foretaste of the felicity which he expected — the reward reserved
for his constant virtue.

4 Let us now look at another picture. Pomponazzi, worn out by
years, harassed by sickness, extended on the bed of pain, without
the splendour of martyrdom, fought out the battle with his enemy —
unseen, tardy, irresistible. Unsustained by the hope of the future,
he placed before him only austere virtue, without reward and without
hope, as the true and final end of the human race. Out of sympathy
with the beliefs of his religion, and with the traditions of so many
centuries ; mocked by contemporaries, and in danger of the stake, he
had no future blessedness to which to turn. He was not cheered by
the smile of the beautiful woman, who invited Socrates to Phthia. He
was soothed neither by Homeric fantasies, nor by the more spiritual
but not less interested promises of the Christian Paradise; and not-
withstanding all this, he was not disturbed by his imminent death.
It behoved him, he said, to prefer duty to life. He sacrificed every- \
thing — affections, pleasure, knowledge, and the future — to rigid virtue. J
Which man is the more magnanimous and sublime, Socrates or •

Pomponazzi ? ' Whatever we may think of th,is striking parallel, we 7 — /
must, I think, acknowledge the greatness of Pomponazzi's life and
character ; as well as admit the enormous influence which he wielded
as a teacher of philosophy. He founded a school, not perhaps
numerically great, but possessing some very renowned names — Simon
Porta the great Aristotelian of Naples, Sepulveda, Julius Caesar
Scaliger, Vanini, Zarabello and Cremonini were directly or indirectly
his pupils. 1 And wherever the lessons of his life and teaching

1 The extent to which Pomponazzi's name became identified with all the
freer and anti-ecclesiastical movements of Italian thought long after his death,
is well known to the student of Italian Philosophy. A striking example of
this is furnished by Bishop Burnet's Letters from Switzerland and Italy , 1685.
Thus he remarks, ' There are societies of men at Naples of freer thought than
can be found in any other place of Italy. The Greek learning begins to
flourish there, and the new Philosophy (Cartesianism) is much studied, and
there is an assembly, that is held in D. Joseph Valeta's library, composed of
men that have a right taste of true learning and good sense. They are ill-
looked on by the clergy, and represented as a set of atheists, and as the spawn
of Pomponatios's school ; but I found no such thing among them. 1 P. 207.

2 1 8 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

penetrated, the spirit that animated them bore its noble fruit. There
was manifested a disinterested, untiring devotion to learning, an
implicit belief in the power and essential divinity of the human
r reason — a full persuasion that unwearied search for truth is the
^ highest, if not the whole, duty of man. Especially was the indomit-
able independence of Pomponazzi's intellectual character productive
of valuable results. The Renaissance had, in this respect, accom-
plished its mission. The newer thought to which it had given
birth, which it had carefully nursed and cradled, was now able for
the most part to shift for itself, and make its own way in the world.
In politics, in science, in philosophy and in religion, modern thought
was breaking away from the old lines and landmarks. Pomponazzi
recognized and prepared for the change. All the main principles of
his teaching were accepted and employed by succeeding thinkers.
<■• His doctrine of * twofold truth,' the distinction between * credita 7 and
* phy sica ' — dogmas to be believed without question and natural pheno-
mena to be received only after verification — was adopted by Galileo
and his followers. His belief in the government of the universe by
uniform and invariable laws has become the foundation-stone of all
modern physical science. Lastly, and this seems to me his greatest
merit : in an age when the foundations of morality and social life
were undermined by the proved weakness and insecurity of the
ecclesiastical sanctions on which they were hitherto based, Pom-
ponazzi discerned the importance as well as truth of eternal and
immutable morality. When Aristotle was once questioned as to the

fgain he had derived from philosophy, he answered, * This, that I do
from love of virtue, and hatred of vice, what you only do from hope
of reward or fear of punishment. 7 Philosophy had taught Pom-
ponazzi the same indomitable faith in the inherent and indestructible
distinctions of morality. His lesson, and the spirit with which he
urged it, was caught up or revived by Peter Charron, Spinoza,
Lessing and Kant ; and is gradually, we may hope, becoming more
and more incorporated with the ethical teaching of our modern
Europe. Like every other thinker whose energies and aspirations
are hampered by harsh and unauthorized restrictions, Pomponazzi
was accustomed to find in the future, with its ameliorations, a solace
for the privations and shortcomings of his own time. In such a
mood we may imagine him indulging in the anticipation which
Lessing has put into his own glowing words : * Sie wird kommen,
sie wird gewiss kommen die Zeit der Vollendung, da der Mensch,
je iiberzeugter sein Verstand einer immer bessern Zukunft sich
fuhlet, von dieser Zukunft gleichwohl Bewegungsgriinde zu seinen
Handlungen zu erborgen nicht nothig haben wird, de er das Gute

General Causes and Leaders. 219

thun wird weil es das Gute ist, nicht weil willktirliche Belohnungen
darauf gesetzt sind, die seinen flatterhaften Blick ehedem bios heften
und starken soil ten die innern besseren Belohnungen desselben zu
erkennen.'

Miss Leycester. To all which I would devoutly say Amen.
. . . But I hope, Dr. Trevor, you do not intend us to discuss
the whole Italian Renaissance at a single sitting, because if so ^
it is likely to be a protracted one.

Trevor. By no means. No one can be more aware of the
manifoldly varied aspects of the whole movement than myself.
The utmost we can do is to select a few salient or noteworthy
topics from the general mass of matter I have brought before
you. . . . Moreover, we must bear in mind that our main
subject, round which our discussions should revolve, is Free-
thought. This is the centre about which I have grouped my
Italian planets, from Dante to Pomponazzi.

Arundel. Well, starting from that centre I must confess
that I thought your general conclusions were frequently
vitiated by a tendency too common to all investigations on the
subject — I mean a disposition to exaggerate, in the direction \
of Free-thought, the implications derivable from the free J
speech of Italians. Because, for instance, the old mysteries /
or the Goliard or Proven9al poetry, were redolent of free ex-
pression, that seems to me no sufficing warrant for inferring
that the freedom was intended to be taken au pied de la lettre.
Nothing is more remarkable in the Italian temperament —
I suppose it belongs to all the Latin races — than the dispro-
portion that exists between speech and genuine sentiment.
When I first visited Italy some years ago I was greatly
struck by the freedom with which young men spoke of
their parents. I naturally thought that parental obedience
was anything but a national virtue ; but I soon found I was
mistaken. Further acquaintance with the people convinced
me that the young really did pay extreme deference and
respect to their parents. An oft-quoted illustration of the
same fact is the behaviour of the Neapolitan mob when the
liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius is delayed. They

220 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

call him l villain/ l blackguard, 7 and every other opprobrious
name they can think of; but no sooner is the hocus-pocus
successful, and the blood declared to be liquefied, than they
immediately fall on their knees, and thank him with every
demonstration of adoring gratitude and piety.

Harrington. The characteristic is well-known; but it is
not adequately described by calling it a divergence between
the sentiment felt and uttered. Its source is an extreme
sensitiveness or impressionability, which is aj%%> seem evan-
escent, not because it is superficial, but because it pertains to a
strongly and variously emotional nature. Thus the vitupera-
tion of Neapolitans at the tardiness of JanrH^us is just as
as their profuse gratitude when he appearf^to accede to
their ^fta^-^Agplying the argument to Renaissance litera-
ture, I should say^fttt^th© expressions of Free-thought, e.g.
in the songs of Goliards^ot*sL& the Decameron, or Morgante,
must be taken for what they a*^--the actual sentiments of
the writers at the time of writing. BUit we must bear in mind
that the errant cleric, or Boccaccio or ^ulci, might have been
surprised into very different arguments and sentiments at
another time.

Trevor. I fully admit — indeed I have often been amused

at this trait of Italians — nor do I think I have lost sight of it

in my description of the Renaissance. When you cannot take

a man's words as the symbol of his definite settled conviction,

/you must take his general tone, his line of reasoning, the spirit

/ which seems to underlie his thought. This I have honestly

I attempted to do. As a result, it appears to me that the litera-

1 ture of the Renaissance is a bona fide expression of extreme

V&eedom not to say licence. I am prepared, however, to

acknowledge that the free sentiments of Italians, and in a

lesser degree of the French, would mean somewhat more if

employed by Englishmen and Germans.

Arundel. With that acknowledgment I am content . . .
but I might have based my objection upon other than national
grounds. . . . Skepticism is precisely one of those for-
bidden subjects on which most men, even Germans and
English, are apt to claim a licence of speech far exceeding
their real opinions.

General Causes and Leaders. 221

Harrington. It is as well not to insist too strongly on
national peculiarities in estimating the Free-thought of the
Renaissance. A good deal of the liberal anti-dogmatic senti-
ment touched upon in Trevor's Paper, as e.g. the Goliard
poetry, Proven9al literature, the mysteries, moralities, and
miracle plays, were the common possession of the whole of
civilized Europe.

Arundel. Another objection I feel to the Doctor's paper is
that it did not appear to contain any sufficing admission of the
consequences of licence of thought in inducing licence of
manners. The most repulsive feature of the Renaissance, to
most students, is the extreme moral laxity which seems to have
affected more or less every class of society. To me this
appears an inseparable attendant on and result of Skepticism.
At least in the cases of Greece and Rome the advance of
extreme libertine opinion, combined with skeptical inroads
into ancient beliefs, synchronize exactly with a marked deterio-
ration of social manners, and an increase of political corruption.
Macchiavelli did no more than give expression to this truth
when he said, that States not held together by the bonds of
religion were on* the road to ruin.

Trevor. I am quite willing to concede — for that matter it
would be difficult to deny — the ethical laxity of Italy during
the Renaissance ; but I should be inclined to ascribe it to other
causes. To me it appears the joint product of several con- )
tributory agencies. First among them I should place the
social disorganization which was the inevitable consequence of ^
the political divisions of Italy, and the continual wars thereby/
engendered. While allied with, and to a great extent caused
by, this internecine strife, must be reckoned the perpetual^
irruptions of foreign, and for the most part mercenary, armies.
No fact is more indelibly impressed upon mediaeval Italy than
the peculiar and extreme lawlessness which followed, like the
slime of a reptile, in the train of these foreign invaders ; and
this quite irrespective of their nationality or religion; for
French and Spanish invaders were not much superior in this
respect to the Lombards. Secondly, I should place as the next
cause of social depravity, the utter corruption of the Romish^

222 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Church. For centuries it had been the policy of Rome to tie
up all moral duty with religious service, in such a manner, as
implicitly to deny the existence of ethical principles or conduct
outside her pale. The consequence was, that when her corrup-
tion and depravity became too conspicuous to be denied, the
whole fabric of moral duty tended to crumble to its ruin. I
have however said enough on this point in my paper. Thirdly,
we must, as I have more than once remarked, make fair allow-
ance for the natural tendency of new-born freedom to rush into
excess. It is now an acknowledged law of history that no
great liberating movement, begotten of intellectual and social
fermentation, and having for its object the enfranchisement of
the long enslaved conscience and intellect of humanity, can be
accomplished without excesses. Indeed, it seems a general law
of the universe that a new birth of any kind is only con-
summated at the cost of much pain and suffering. Christ's
own announcement of the effect of His revelation, ( Think ye
that I am come to send peace on earth : I tell you nay, but
rather a sword/ is applicable to every revolution whose object
is the Divine cause of justice and freedom. . . . You
must also remember that, on the principle of necessity being
the mother of invention, the lawlessness of the Renaissance
had the effect of inciting men to discover remedies for it.
Machiavelli's Prince indicates one remedy, perhaps then the most
obvious — political force and coercion. Another, and better,
was the tendency to throw off ecclesiasticism, and to return to
the primary foundation and ethics of the gospel — while Pompo-
nazzi, as we saw, went a step further, and sought for it in the in-
trinsic claims of virtue, and the natural repulsiveness of vice.

Harrington. Your plea, I think, is justifiable ; but you seem
to me to have slightly waived the main issue. The question
is : Did Skepticism of itself induce a laxity of manners in those
who adopted it? I think it must have done so in certain
cases. Nor should I deem that such a concession contains
anything derogatory to Skepticism. There are few principles
in the world so inherently faultless as not to disclose in their
working and operation upon differently constituted characters
various seamy sides.

General Causes and Leaders. 223

Miss Leycesteb. There is also another reply to Mr.
Arundel's objection. The expressions of libertine and profane
thought which we find in Renaissance literature may be far
in excess of real action or usual habit, just as skeptical expres-
sions may have implied a greater latitude of thought than
really existed. . . . What appears to me the most remark-
able feature in the history of the period is the * Weltschmerz '
of some of its leading thinkers. There is something pathetic-
ally ironical in the fact that men who laid such stress on
Naturalism, and who resuscitated the long-lost belief in the
joys and duties of mundane existence, extinguished as it was
by mediaeval asceticism and other-worldliness — should have
suffered so severely from what I suppose must have been a
sense of the worthless or unsatisfactory nature of their effects.
One is inclined to ask, does unsufferable ennui follow upon an
exaggerated estimate of terrestrial existence, for a similar
reason that Pessimism and Nihilism tread on the heels of
Materialism ?

Harrington. It seems difficult to lay down any absolute
rule for aberrations of human sentiment, even when they are
manifested as general characteristics of any particular epoch.
For myself, I should say that in the Italian Renaissance the
feeling was a relic of that extreme asceticism of mediaeval
times to which you have alluded.

Arundel. On the other hand, it may have been a reaction
from the mundane enjoyments men sought to find in establish-
ing Nature as their Deity, and obedience to her behests as
their duty. Both the conception, and its actual practice, could
not but cloy, in the case of intellects so comprehensive and
feelings so profound as e.g. those of Petrarca.

Trevor. My theory of the matter is much more simple.
* Weltschmerz,' or intellectual ennui, is not an affection con-
fined to any age, or to any particular type of thought. It is,
in my opinion, totally independent of all general movements,
whether in religion or anything else. I regard it merely as
the reaction which under all circumstances follows intellectual >
labour, the lassitude that follows over-tension of brain-tissue.
Depression is, as all students know, the invariable concomitant

224 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

of severe intellectual work ; and if not resisted may easily lead
to a systematic contempt for existence, such as that displayed
by Petrarca, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini. ... I need
not add that, when strongly marked, it is often a precursor of
cerebral disease.

Miss Leycester. Of course we cannot pretend to dispute
your opinion when medical subjects are concerned; but it
seems to me clear that the feeling we are discussing does pre-
sent itself in epochs. We have seen it strongly marked in the
Renaissance. We find it again in the French Revival of
Literature, immediately preceding the Revolution. Traces of
it present themselves in our Elizabethan era. It is strongly
impressed upon the German ' Sturm und Drang/ and lastly it
is dominant in the absurd Pessimism of German present-day
thought — the lowest depths to which German speculation has
yet reached.

Trevob. You might have added the Augustan period of
Roman literature — our theories, however, are not altogether
irreconcilable. Grant that ' Weltschmerz ' is a reaction after
severe mental toil, and it will naturally present itself as a
general feature of every epoch of unusual intellectual activity.
All I wish to protest against is the consideration of it as an
epidemic or contagious disease. It is entirely individual ; and
depends upon the cerebral and nervous constitution of the
sufferer. An induction of its more celebrated victims will

•

(readily show us that it manifests itself in most cases where
the sentiment or imagination of the student predominates over
his purely intellectual faculties. Indeed, the measure of re-
sistance that a severe brain-worker is able to oppose to the
feeling forms a fair criterion of the native vigour and recupera-
tive energy of his intellect.

Harrington. I have never seen brought out so fully as I
think the subject deserves, the intimate connexion that existed
between Italy and England, as regards the Naturalism that
marks the Renaissance of the former and the Reformation of
the latter country. Shakespere and Ren Jonson may stand
as types of the tendency in the Elizabethan Age, as Boccaccio,
Pulci and Ariosto in the Renaissance. In both schools there

General Causes and Leaders. 225

is the same vigorous vitality — the same healthy appreciation
of mundane existence. So far as originality goes, the palm, I
suppose, must be assigned to Italy. Indeed, the extent of
indebtedness of our Elizabethan literature to the Italian
Renaissance, which our literary historians are only beginning
to recognise at its full value, seems to me quite embarrassing.
Not only the materials for the Shaksperian dramas, to take
the most conspicuous instance, but the spirit which evolved
them, are importations from the Golden Age of Italian litera-
ture. Hence, if Shakspere is — to use a phrase of Jacobi's —
* a Christian in heart, in intellect he is a pagan ' ; and his
paganism has most of the attributes of the Renaissance pro-
duct of the same name — a clear perception and forcible grasp
of terrestrial realities and enjoyments, combined with a con-
temptuous ignoring of speculative truths, whether philosophical
or theological. It would not be very difficult, in my opinion,
to prove that Shakespere is himself more than half a skeptic.

Tbevob. For that matter, the difficulty in these days is to
affirm what Shakspere has not been demonstrated to have
been. Certainly he knew how to dramatize doubt in action.
For doubt in speculation I cannot believe that he cared. His
own idiosyncrasies were so entirely and exclusively practical
that he was content to ignore all theorizings of whatever kind.
Therein lies, in my opinion, his inferiority to Goethe.

Miss Leycestee. Goethe no doubt displays the warp and
woof — the visible texture — of his speculations more clearly
than does Shakspere. That seems the greatest distinction
between them. Goethe shows us his metaphysical ratiocina-
tions in the making ; but Shakspere gives us his as the finished
product — the woven material of his mental loom applied to the
ordinary uses of human existence. Hence we may regard his
practical tendency as the final result of effective contempla-
tion, and definitively attained conclusions, on the problems of
the universe. There are many passages in his works which
appear to me to show that this was the case. This would
rather prove than disprove his Skepticism ; for, as we know,
the concrete and practical is a favourite refuge for all doubters
from the uncertainties and disappointments of pure speculation

vol. 1. Q

226 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

. . . but I have myself a few criticisms to offer on Dr.
Trevor's Paper. First, as to Dante, regarding him from the
standpoint of Free-thought ; I should have liked some account
of the effect produced by the Divina Commoedia on subsequent
popular theology. I refer especially to the Inferno, and what
I consider the mischievous results of its vividly realistic
pictures in directing, confirming and intensifying ordinary
belief in the eternity and severity of hell-torments. The
thinkers, I quite grant, were affected in quite an opposite
direction. Instead of persuasion, the horrible torments of the
Inferno induced in them a healthy repulsion. While as to its
eternity, Pulci proves its injustice in a single couplet. It is
in the complaint of that most anti-diabolical devil Ashtaroth,
who contrasts the ready pardon granted, for a single petition,
to Christians with the inexorable doom of himself and his
fallen brethren : —

( Noi peccammo una volta, e in sempiterno
Eilegati siam tutti nello inferno.' l

But on the ignorant, the timid and unreflecting, the atrocities
of the Inferno must have exercised a most pernicious influence.
Literature, in the person of its highest living representative,
had come forward to supplement and corroborate the super-
stitious teaching of friars and preachers. It thus threw men
still more into the selfish grasp of the Church. Who would
not have sacrificed his last farthing in delivering a dear friend
from the miseries of some of these filthy bolgias, which
Dante's ungainly imagination had painted in such loathsome
colours? Moreover, the extra punishments he awarded to
heretics, combined with the similar treatment of those un-
fortunate speculators in Italian religious art, must have tended,
in many cases, to repress all independent thought. In short,
the Inferno of Dante, whatever its merits as a work of poetry,
added indefinitely to the harshness and severity of a doctrine
which under any form is painfully repulsive to a humane
mind.
Harrington. I think you exaggerate the effects of a purely

1 Morgante, Canto xxv. sir. 284.

General Causes and Leaders. 227

imaginative work upon the average mental faculties of man-
kind. Men's convictions, in most cases, are not permanently
modified by appeals to their sympathies whidh they know are
founded on fictitious bases. Take the case e.g. of a novel
reader whose feelings are sought to be enlisted on the side of
an imaginary hero or heroine, of whose principles or conduct
he may not approve — the sympathy he might otherwise have
felt will, in this particular instance, be counteracted by dis-
sentient conviction. Or take the case of a cultured Unitarian
who listens to the Passion-music of Handel's Messiah. He
may feel for the time his emotions stirred by music and words
from whose implication, regarded as dogmatic propositions,
he altogether dissents. Similarly, readers of Dante's Inferno
might be pleasurably affected by the poetio beauties of the
work, and yet, unless their conviotions had already been
pledged, would neither feel inoreased anxiety for departed
relatives, nor would they abstain from speculation on account
of the punishment supposed to be inflioted on errant thinkers.

Miss Leycester. But you are begging my whole position,
Charles. The Inferno of Dante was addressed to men whose
convictions were already, and most heartily, enlisted in its
favour. The poem was a vivid elaboration of a doctrine they
had long believed, upon what they regarded infallible authority.
It was just this confirmation and detailed elaboration of an
old article of their faith, that made the Inferno so dangerous.

Mrs. Harrington. My own criticism of the Divina Com-
mcedia is, that it appears to me an unsatisfactory handling of
the whole theme. No doubt it is full of poetic beauties ; but
neither the Purgatorio nor Paradiso — the Inferno I omit as a
non-existent state — convey my ideal of the future world.
Indeed the Paradiso, for the most part, is only a celestial
canopy designed for the especial purpose of the enthronization
of Beatrice.

Arundel. I suspect, Mrs. Harrington, that like so many
other readers of Dante, your dislike of II Paradiso is founded
upon what is in reality its most marvellous feature, i.e. its
exceedingly impalpable and superhuman character. It soars
so far above the sphere of our ordinary occupations, thoughts

228 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

and interests, that it necessarily forfeits some measure of our
active sympathy. It is very remarkable that the division of
the Commoedia in which humanity approximates most to our
actual experience (I am not speaking satirically) — I mean the
Inferno — has always been that part of it which has commanded
most general appreciation. As to Beatrice, I readily grant
that, even in her heavenly character of Theology, she occupies
a disproportionate space in the common home of all the
blessed. -She is, besides, too ecclesiastical and dogmatically
speculative to be Christian after the mind of Christ.

Miss Leycester. Speaking of the celestial Beatrice of
Dante, we are naturally reminded of her sister in literature —
the beatified Laura of Petrarca. In your remarks on Petrarca,
Doctor Trevor, you did not assign a philosophical reason why
the cult of women assumed the rather extravagant form it
seems to have attained in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies. Are we to take it as an outcome of chivalry, or of
religion?

Trbvor. Primarily, I should say, of religion; secondarily
and directly, of chivalry. The gradual growth of Mariolatry
in the Church, together with the mingled refinement of
manners and deference to women engendered by the inter-
course of Europe with the East, furnished a double foundation,
sacred as well as secular, for the fancies of Dante and Petrarca
— not to mention the personal tendencies of those two poets.

Harrington. I must say, Doctor, that I thought you gave
an ingenious but not quite fair advantage to Skepticism, in the
case of Petrarca, by making his Laura the setherialized symbol
of unattained desire. No doubt his passion for her became
ennobled and sublimated as he grew older, but its ultimate
form was rather a spiritual type of womanliness than that of
unrealized aspiration. Petrarca's Skepticism was not, I think,
sufficiently pronounced to have suggested such an excogitation.

Trevor. My reason for that view, which was thoroughly
well considered, was Petrarca's undeniable melancholy as he
approached the end of his life. All his later writings betray
such a profound sense of the vanity of mundane existence
and objects — such a tender, wistful longing for some worthier

General Causes and Leaders. 229

attainment — while, pari-passu with the growth of these feelings
there is an increased appreciation of the spiritual excellencies
of Laura, that any other interpretation of her final relation
to Petrarca is to me almost inconceivable. This view seems
moreover confirmed by many expressions in the latter half of
his Rime ; several passages of which I had marked for quota-
tion, but omitted in order to save time. As to Petrarca's
Skepticism, it was of a mingled quality. It was not exclu-
sively, or even mainly, an intellectual product, being just as
much emotional and sentimental. It was the outcome of
passions unsatisfied, aspirations unrealized, as well as of truth
unattained. He is, in point of fact, an interesting example of
the combination of intellectual distrust with emotional dis-
satisfaction — a kind of mystical skeptic.

Abundel. On the subject of Boccaccio, Trevor, I must
enter a protest against your interpretation of his Three Rings.
You seemed to imply that the story contained nothing- deroga-
tory to Christianity. I cannot perceive how, from the stand-
point you adopted, you could have arrived at that conclusion.
Certainly, if the story as you interpreted it teaches anything,
it teaches the co-equality of all Religions ; and from that point
of view Christianity can claim no superiority over the other
two Semitic creeds; and there is therefore no real reason
why Christians might not become Jews or Mahomedans. Now
while I readily admit that every form of faith may have its
own good sides, and that there is a peculiar suitability of the
great religions of the world to the races among which they
originated — while also I repudiate the conclusion that the
Divine love is confined exclusively to those of my own creed ;
still I cannot, as a Christian, allow that Judaism and Mahome-
tanism are on precisely the same level with my own faith.
Nor do I think your interpretation of the story justified, either
by its original form in the Decameron, or by Lessing's re-
adaptation in Nathan der Weise. In the two cases the original
ring remains. Boccaccio expressly calls it the True Ring,
and the other two are therefore only imitations. It appears to
me that this single fact is of itself enough to set aside the
complete co-equality of the three rings. Boccaccio implies

230 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

that next in merit to Christianity — the original ring, and the
prototype and exemplar of the other two — stand the remain-
ing rings, Judaism and Mahomedanism.

Trevor. I can appreciate the feeling which prompts your
objection; but the real question at issue is concerned with
Boccaccio's words. These must, I think, be held to signify
that the three rings are of precisely similar construction, and
of equal value. Moreover, it is the father himself who has
copies made of the original ring; and why? Not as you
would" imply, to mark a preference for one son above another.,
but for the very opposite reason, — because he loved his three
sons equally and would make no invidious distinction of one
above the rest. . . . But stay ! Here is a good translation
of the Decameron. I will hand it to Harrington ; and let him
decide the matter.

Harrington. Thanks, I don't want the translation. I
remember Boccaccio's words perfectly well, and their only
meaning is, in my opinion, what the Doctor contends for. I
can find nothing on which to base the conclusion of designed
inequality in the worth of the rings. The declared intention
of the father is that the rings should be absolutely indis-
tinguishable, both in construction and value, one from the other.
Lessing's words —

' . . . Da er ihm die Binge bringt
Kann selbst der Vater semen Musterring
Nicht unterscheiden ' —

are almost a literal rendering of Boccaccio. Besides, the
original ring, if it be distinguishable from the other two,
must have been not Christianity but Judaism, as the earliest
Semitic faith. I won't say that this interpretation of the
relations of Christianity to the other two creeds is without
difficulties. Still this is, in my judgment, the meaning of
Boccaccio's words; and this construction of them is rather
intensified than lessened in Nathan der Weise.

Miss Leycester. My solution of Mr. Arundel's difficulty,
and the reconciliation for Christians of the pre-eminence of
their faith with a due recognition of the merits of Judaism
and Mahomedanism would be this: — The three start from a

General Causes and Leaders. 231

common origin, and possess, for the most part fundamentals in
common. That is, they have all three alike an ethical basis.
They aim at establishing virtue and goodness, justice and
charity, among men. Judaism, Christianity and Mahomed-
anism have in this respect a common object. But in carrying
out and developing that object, the means may vary; and
Christianity may well, to a thoughtful Christian, seem to have
superior sanctions, higher affinities, historical and otherwise,
and to lead generally to a nobler life. But so far as the moral
bases, the direct intention, the indispensable requisites of the
religions are concerned, the three rings may be said to be
identical.

Abundel. I cannot accept your rendering of Boccaccio's
words ; nor can I admit Miss Leycester's ingenious comment
upon them. If your construction held good, Boccaccio would
be a complete Skeptic, maintaining the absolute indifference
of all religious creeds; and that would be an inference directly
contradicted by his whole life.

Miss Leycesteb. I could have wished, Dr. Trevor, that you
had expended a little more space on Pulci. As a type of the
general Skepticism of the Renaissance, I think he stands
higher than Pomponazzi; who seems to me too terribly in ]
earnest to be an exponent of a movement that had so many I
lighter elements of gaiety, frivolity and insouciance inter- ■*
mingled with it. Besides which, Pomponazzi's Skepticism was
altogether an academic product. It was the Free-thought of K
Pulci and Ariosto that formed the topics of conversation at the '
courts of Italian princes, and in the mansions of Florentine
merchants. Pulci, in short, was a free-thinker in Belles Lettres;\
Pomponazzi in the severest walks of philosophy. Now the\
general literature and popular affinities of the Renaissance
seem to affect the former muoh more than they do the latter.

Trevor. I quite acknowledge Pulci's claims from the
standpoint you mention. He is, as you say, the free-thinker
of courts and of literary and civic circles. But for that very
reason his contribution to the Free-thought of the Renaissance /
is not so permanently valuable as that of Pomponazzi. Wit, I
banter and sarcasm have their fitting place in every intel-

232 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

lectual movement ; bat those agencies are neither so effective
nor so durable as intellectual power. Pomponazzi is especially
the thinker — the reasoner ; and it is in its ratiocination, in
the free and independent play of the purely intellectual
faculties, that the especial value of the Renaissance to European
thought chiefly consists.

Harrington. I was glad to hear you place Pulci's Devil
Ashtaroth, on a higher pedestal than Dante's malicious monkey-
fiends, Milton's diabolical giant, or Goethe's sneering demon.
All the latter creations seem to me to savour strongly of melo-
drama, and to betray a tendency to the excessive denigration
against which a common proverb warns us. Now *once grant
the ordinary theological account of the origin of these infernal
spirits, and all such representations must appear over-strained
. and exaggerated. Their very title, 'fallen angels,' implies
that half mournful reminiscence of other times to which
Ashtaroth so plaintively refers ; and his plea is confirmed by
the psychological experience which assures us that an entire
elimination of inherent tendencies, and a substitution, as com-
plete of others diametrically opposite, is & priori an enormous
improbability.

Arundel. For my part, I prefer Milton's Satan, with his
„ genuine diabolical utterance c Evil, be thou my good.' We
cannot apply psychological laws derived from introspection
of our human faculties to possible changes in the minds of
superhuman spirits. Largeness of capacity implies greatness
of possible movement or transmutation, and I can readily con-
ceive how all the noble passions of the great archangel might
have been perverted by his ambition, just- as wine turns to
vinegar. Nor indeed are there lacking examples of a similar
kind of transformation in human nature. Besides, the evil of
Milton's Satan is a distinct positive entity, the very idea of
which provokes violent antagonism — that of Pulci's Ashtaroth
is a mild diluted evil, more suggestive of acquiescence than
repulsion; and the former seems on that ground more in
harmony with the strong positive qualities of evil as we know
it in the world.

Miss Lkycester. Do you think so, Mr. Arundel ? For my

General Causes and Leaders. 233

part all my experience tends in an opposite direction. I never
yet have found evil with no trace of goodness either in or
associated with it — without some palliative or redeeming
trait. Evil, as we know it, seems therefore to be quite of
the type of Ashtaroth, instead of the unqualified wickedness
of Milton's Satan, or the combined cunning and malevolence
of Goethe's Mephistophiles.

Harbington. Another protest which I think should be
entered against part of your paper refers to your treatment of
Machiavelli. I think you have hardly done justice to that
most eminent thinker, nor to the political theories associated
with his name. The justification you half grudgingly awarded
to him on account of the state of Italy appears to me to
amount to a complete exoneration. No one except a practical
statesman, and such Machiavelli undoubtedly was, can grapple
with the imperious necessities of certain political disorders.
The remedy must oftentimes be severe because of the severity
of the disease. It is a case of ' kill or cure.' Now, taking
Sismondi's Republics as a guide to the state of Italy in the
sixteenth century, it seems difficult to conceive how any
other remedy than the extreme one prescribed by Machiavelli
could have met the urgency of the case. A tyranny, strong,
masterful and unscrupulous was the only conceivable process by
which order could be introduced into the anarchy and con-
fusion then rampant in Italy. G-ervinus said of the polity of
Ancient Borne that it was based on the dictum 'Necessitas
non habet leges.' The good of the Republic was the single
aim of her statesmen and generals ; and to this ' Supreme
Law ' every other consideration was subordinated. Indeed
many writers of the highest mark have agreed that, in danger-
ous political conjunctures, recourse may be had to extreme
measures. Jean Paul e.g. defended the deed of Charlotte
Corday as an act of ethical retribution. Schiller in his dramas
repeatedly allows an appeal to crime in the interests of society
and of freedom, while Goethe says : —

1 Jeder Weg zu rechtem Zwecke
1st auch recht auf jeder Strecke.' 1

1 These words were written some years since, and it is not intended to claim

234 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Trevor. — I entirely dissent from your line of argument,
which is nothing less than the apology which all despots and
tyrants have known how to make for themselves, and their
measures of coercion and repression. I don't wish to deny that
there may arise occasionally political conjunctures which, like
the Gordian knot, admit of no solution except that of the
sword, but it does not seem to me that the state of Italy in the
sixteenth century was precisely of this kind, nor do I feel sure
that the bulk of its people did not enjoy a larger measure of
political and religious freedom than we, at this distance of time,
think possible. Machiavelli, with all his pretended love of
/ liberty, shows most clearly that he distrusts it ; and that his
sole principle of social order is brute force. This is also
proved by his unworthy conception of humanity. For with
men as he supposes them — compounds of weakness and
wickedness — a pitiless tyranny would doubtless be the most
effectual rule. Nor can I admit, even as a temporary ex-
/ pedient, the sacrifice of liberty — freedom of thought and
v speech — at the shrine of social order. Order doubtless is good,
but freedom is still better, and for my part I could acquiesce
even in a certain amount of lawlessness, if it could be shown
that it was an inevitable result of freedom, rather than I would
in a tyranny which involved slavery.

Miss Leycester. In your account of Pomponazzi you
omitted one thing, Dr. Trevor. You did not give us Bocca-
lini's amusing satire on him and his doctrine of double
truth.

Trevor. The omission was intentional, Miss Leycester :
I meant to read during our discussion the rendering of the
passage in the Earl of Monmouth's translation of Advertise*

for them any novelty in respect of a defence of Machiavellianism in politics.
They merely indicate the lines on which such a defence has been variously
placed, from the publication e.g. of Gabriel Naude's Considerations Politique*
sur lea Coups (TJEUU, 1712, to Lord Acton's Introduction to Mr, Burd's II
Principe, 1891. The latter concludes with a sentence so applicable to the
above theory as to deserve quotation. Machiavelli ' is more rationally in-
telligible when illustrated by lights falling not only from the century he
wrote in, but from our own, which has seen the course of its history twenty-
five times diverted by actual or attempted crime.'

General Causes and Leaders. 235

merits from Parnassus. 1 Here it is : — c Pietro Pomponatio, a
Mantuan, appeared next' (before Apollo, who is supposed to
be engaged in judging the most renowned literary characters
of all time) * all besmeared with sweat, and very ill accoutred,
who was found composing a book wherein, by foolish and
sophistical arguments, he endeavoured to prove that the soul
of man was mortal. Apollo, not able to look upon so wicked
a wretch, commanded that his library should be presently
burnt ; and that he himself should be consumed in the same
flames: for that fool deserved not the advantage of books
who laboured thereby only to prove that men were beasts.
Pomponatio cryed out then with a loud voice, protesting that
he believed the mortality of the soul only as a philosopher.
Then said Apollo to the executioners : let him be burnt only
as a philosopher.'

Habringtgn. — How curiously all these stories are linked
together. The anecdote you have read is clearly related to
the well-known story of the German Prince-Bishop ; who
being remonstrated with for undue freedom of language, re-
plied that 4 he swore as a Prince, not as a Bishop ; ' on which
the question was asked, ' When the Devil took possession of
the Prince what would become of the Bishop ? ' a story by the
way which would seem to show that the doctrine of double
truth, or disparate responsibility, is not limited to philosophy.
Indeed the convenience of such a principle in ethics is obvious.
You have something of that sort too among the fanatical
sectaries of the Commonwealth ; who held that whatever sin
they committed was due to * the Old Adam,' and formed no
part of their own regenerate nature.

Miss Leycester. What an interesting feature of mediaeval
manners those philosophical jousts must have been. I suppose
it would be too superficial a mode of accounting for them
to say that they were suggested by the prevailing taste
for tournaments — the wish to test intellectual prowess by the
same means as physical. It seems a pity we have nothing of
the same kind now in our universities. The contest of a

1 Advertisements from Parnassus, etc.; translated by the Earl of Monmouth.
2nd Edition, 1669, p. 158.

236 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

well-matched pair of Professors representing say, the intui-
tional and experimental philosophy, or ecclesiasticism and
rationalism, would be an interesting spectacle.

Abundel. More interesting than useful I think. The
qualities needed for success, in a contest of this kind, are
peculiar and, to my mind, not of the highest merit. A great
amount of assurance, controversial astuteness, combined with
readiness and fluency, are the most necessary ; and these are
not invariably combined with learning, or profound intel-
lectual power. Besides which, they were generally inefficacious ;
and the hearers left the arena with precisely the same opinions
as they entered it. The intellectual gain to European culture
from the numberless controversies with which the halls of
mediaeval universities resounded seems to me very doubtful.
The elder Casaubon summed up that matter years ago,
when, on being shown the great hall of the Sorbonne, and the
attendant remarking that it was the place where all the great
Doctors disputed, he quietly asked — 'Aye, and what have
they settled ? '

Tbevob. I fear the same question might be put to most
branches and methods of human enquiry. But the mediaeval
free-trade in teaching, for it almost amounted to that, was not
so ineffectual as you think. When Abelard emptied his rival's
lecture room in Paris, and Pomponazzi repeated the exploit in
Padua, both victorious professors being avowedly champions of
Free-thought, such a fact speaks well for the docility and true
instincts of the pupils, as well as for the power of the teachers.

Miss Letcesteb. I confess I am radical enough to wish for
a return to the freedom of teaching which existed in those
days. What can be more humdrum, stereotyped and conven-
tional than our modern university usages, with their protec-
tionism and exclusiveness in every department of thought. I
have been lately reading, with intense enjoyment, Remusat's
dramatised Abelard. Take the scene depicted in that work
of the young Breton student's controversy with the renowned
William of Champeaux. What vigour and animation is there
displayed. The whole scene is instinct with full, fresh and
free intellectual life. Even the turbulence of the students is

General Causes and Leaders. 237

only the youthful expression of mental excitation. Compare
such a scene with the dull routine of an English University
Lecture Room in our own days, and who would not prefer the
life and freedom of Paris in the thirteenth century to the staid
and respectable, but hopelessly apathetic, proceedings of e.g. an
Oxford * Lecture ' of our own day. Moreover, what a reflection
upon our boasted advance in liberty and civilization, — the re-
mark I may say does not apply to German Universities, who
have never given up their prerogative of free-trade in teach-
ing — that if a modern Abelard or Pomponazzi were to appear
at one of our great seats of learning, he could not find a room
in which to deliver his lectures.

Arundel. Well, he might hire the Town Hall of the Mayor
for a couple of guineas !

Harrington. But the poor wandering lecturer might not
have so much money, or if he had, and chose to invest it in
the way you suggest, the authorities would, in the case of a
Pomponazzi, prohibit the attendance of the undergraduates.
. . . But I fear your German ideas, Florence, make you
unjust to our more decorous English customs. Under the anti-
quated and formal usages of our Universities you would find
more * liberty of prophesying ' than you are aware of. At
present there is, I am informed, not a single phase of thought,
in Church or nation, which has not its exponent, generally an
able one, in our University chairs. When I was at Oxford,
twenty-five years ago, there was a much more limited selec-
tion ; but in those days we supplemented by private enterprise
the deficiencies of our national seminaries. I was a member
of a club of advanced thinkers in which we broached and dis-
cussed many things which were then little thought of, but
which have since come to the surface of English speculation.
I am inclined to think that our private debating club, which
we called the Synagogue, was of real service to me in my pro-
fession ; and I know fellow-members who have since achieved
distinction, both at the Bar and in the House of Commons, who
ascribe the foundation of their debating power to the practice
of free and full discussion which we thus privately enjoyed in
our university days.

238 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Trevor. No doubt such debates are useful for certaiu pur-
poses ; and so must also have been the dialectical contests in
the Universities of the middle ages ; but their peculiar merits
were better adapted, I think, to meet the wants of those days
than similar exhibitions would be to supply our own. Liberty
enjoys a wider scope and a greater variety of existence now
than she did then. With a free printing press, a man who has
anything worth communicating can, as a rule, labour under no
difficulty as to the means ; and to my mind the cold unimpas-
sioned utterances of the press are better adapted to philosophi-
cal discussion than the warmth of debate and personal alter-
cation, besides being more dignified and impartial.

Mrs. Harrington. I want to know what possible interest a
Paduan or Parisian citizen could have in debates which he
would hardly understand, carried on as they were in Latin.
He could not even know, of himself, which of the champions
came off best. Whereas if he went to a tournament or some
contest of physical strength he would have ocular demonstra-
tion of the final result.

Arundel. There was a considerable circulation of a kind of
popular student Latinity in all the mediaeval university towns ;
so that the terms more frequently used in debate were well
recognised by the average citizen. As to the victorious com-
batant, perhaps the citizen identified him by the same token
as the rustic on a similar occasion, who said ' He could see who
was the first, that put t'other fellow in a passion.'

Harrington. There are several more points in Pomponazzi
that suggest discussion. Take e.g. the storm of indignation
which his book on Immortality raised, and his attempt to meet
it by the plea of ' twofold truth.' Theologians are never tired
of telling us that our religious beliefs are based on faith, and
are not dependent on the reason. Yet the moment a belief is
professed avowedly independent of all reason, they immedi-
ately exclaim against it as infidel, blasphemous, or at least
heterodox. What is this but a tacit acknowledgment that the
reason must have some part in every sincere conviction which
a man has ?

Arundel. In the majority of cases the religious beliefs of

General Causes and Leaders. 239

men are founded on the unconditional demand of faith, and
owe little or nothing to the approval or disapproval of the rea-
son. The difficulties of theologians commence with the minor-
ity who bring all convictions indifferently to the bar of its
judgment. In such cases no doubt they distrust, though rather
illogically, a conviction ostensibly based upon faith, revela-
tion, or religious intuition, when it is unaccompanied by the
approval of the reason ; but I confess the inconsistency which
must needs include reason as an element of all. well-founded
conviction seems to me not only justifiable but happy. Hence
if a friend were to assure me that he believed a doctrine solely
on the ground of Revelation, though all the facts of the case
appeared to him to militate against it as a scientific truth, I am
not sure that as a clergyman I should have any ground for
remonstrating with his faith as imperfect, though as a philo-
sopher, I should certainly think that it needed some reasonable
presumption to give it the validity which every genuine belief
should possess.

Harbington. We are getting back into our former discus-
sion on 'Double Truth.' But you must take care, Arundel.
If you divide yourself into two personalities, philosophical and
theological, you will be treading on the heels of Pompo-
nazzi. . . . By the way, the 4 absolute morality ' of the
Italian thinker suggested to my mind a speculation with which
I have often entertained myself as to the future of philosophi-
cal and ethical thought. Since the time of Kant, antinomies
and categorical imperatives, or ultimate truths in which con-
tradictions converge, are continually assuming a larger import-
ance both in philosophy and theology. 1 We are, I think, ap-
proaching a time in which the simple affirmative l It is so/
or l It must be so ' will be the ne plus ultra of all ratiocina-
tion, and the basis of all religion and morality. So philosophy
will end in dogma of the most decisive and unconditional kind;
and her progress will have been like a stormy ocean dividing
two solid continents — a philosophical Atlantic, separating, yet
forming a highway between, an old world of metaphysical

1 Among more recent illustrations of this tendency may be noted Lotzo in
Germany ; and Darwin, and H. Spencer, in England.

240 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

dogma and a new world of positive or scientific dogma — or
like the human maturity of independent thought, which sepa-
rates the unreasoned convictions of childhood from the senile
obstinacy of old age.

Miss Leycesteb. Why, Charles, your predicted c Future '
will be quite a c Ladies' epoch/ Our sex has long since at-
tained the culmination of philosophy, if that is to consist of an
immediate intuition or simple determination which disdains
all reasoning and is impervious to all argument. What a
forcible justification, by the way, of the anticipation of the
advocates of woman's rights, that our sex is destined in some
remote future to occupy its own place as the head of the intel-
lectual universe.

Arundel. Moreover there is another still more dire con-
tingency, if that be possible — when all the religious and philo-
sophical problems of the universe have been thus reduced to a
few infallible propositions. What would become of the Skep-
tics?

Tbevob. Of course we should start afresh by analysing the
supposed propositions, and protesting against their claim to
infallibility. I cannot say, Harrington, that I agree with your
forecast. The resources of the human intellect appear to me to
be boundless and therefore inexhaustible. I do not even share
the opinion of Oomte and others, who think that metaphysics
have arrived at the end of their tether, and that the Future
of human enquiry pertains entirely to physical science.
Physics without the ' Meta f are only conceivable in an uni-
verse where nothing is unknown; or where human faculties
are incapable of the faintest degree of imagination or idealiza-
tion. Either supposition is practically inconceivable. That
physics will absorb more of human attention in the future
than its ally is, I think, probable ; nor need we deprecate such
an event. I however agree with you so far, that I think our
scientists are daily becoming more dogmatic ; thus reproducing
the very fault which they usually find most reason to repre-
hend in metaphysics.

Habrington. Eeturning to Pomponazzi — I was struck by
the fact of his sincerity, so affectingly disclosed in the com-

General Causes and Leaders. 241

parison of himself and his lot to Prometheus. It would appear
that there were problems of which he could not accept l Two-
fold Truth ' as an adequate solution. This sufficed when he
dealt with the dogmas of the Church ; but when he came to
antinomies inherent in the constitution of the universe — when
it was no longer * Philosophy versus Theology/ but 'Philosophy
versus itself ' — then he found himself foiled and vanquished.

Arundel. If his end was accelerated in the way Trevor
suggested, by opposing his finite intellect to the insolubilities
of the universe, I think I can supply you with a better illus-
tration of his fate than the comparison of sea waves vainly
dashing themselves against a rock. I heard a story the other
day of a Wiltshire farmer of the olden time, when land was
cheap and corn dear, and agriculture was pursued in the happy-
go-lucky manner which such circumstances might be expected
to produce. His name was Dobbs, and he used to live in this
neighbourhood. When Dobbs grew old he was compelled to
seek for assistance in his farm work; so he brought home
from Salisbury fair one day a stalwart ploughman whom, on
the morrow, he sent into a field to plough. Alas ! before din-
ner time the new man returned from his work bringing with
him a broken ploughshare, and told Dobbs he had broken it
while ploughing into a large dock-root which stood in the
middle of the field. His master, after eyeing him for a moment
with supreme contempt, broke out, l Ah, I zee thee'rt only a fule
after all. Why, I've ploughed round thik old dock every year
for this vifty year and never broke a sheer in my life. Thee'd
best go about thy business.' It seems to me that Pomponazzi
is like the ploughshare, which snapped because it would persist
in encountering the hard root which lay directly in its path.

Trevor. But you see it is not every ploughman who has
learnt, or is able to appreciate, Dobbs' method of ploughing
round an obstacle. Some intellects must, at whatever cost,
plough a straight furrow.

Miss Leycester. Besides which, Mr. Arundel, the dock had
no business there ; and the ploughshare broke in doing its duty.

Arundel. In an universe so full of tough problems as ours,
a field without its ancient and indestructible dock-root might
be considered an anomaly.

VOL. I. * * * * ^

GIORDANO BRUNO.

( Veritas, a quocunque dicatur, a Spiritu Sancio est?

St. Ambrose.

' Die wenigen, die was davon erkannt
Die thdricht g'nug ihr voiles Herz nicht tcahrten
Dem P&bd ihr Gefuhl, ihr Schauen offenbarien
Hat man vonje gekreuzigt und verbrannt?

Goethe, Faust.

' Religious disbelief and philosophical skepticism are not merely not the same,
but have no natural connection.' 1

Sir Wm. Hamilton, Appendix to Lectures, i. 394.

1 Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't,
(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly,
And absolutely and exclusively)
In any Revelation called Divine.
No dogmas nail your faith, and what remains ;
But say so, like the honest man you aref*

Browning, Works, vol. v. p. 267.

S44

CHAPTER IV.
GIORDANO BRUNO.

Harrington. We discuss to-night a name of rare interest.
We may mark it with red letters in our calendar of Free-
thought, as Giordano Bruno, Apostle and Martyr. 1

1 The following are the works and authorities cited in this chapter : —

Jordani Bruni, Opera Latine conscript*, 8 vols., Naples 1879-1891. This is
the elaborate Edition of his whole works which is now being published at the
expense of the Italian government. As yet (1892) only the Latin works have
appeared.

Jordani Bruni, Nolani Scripta qua Latine conficit, edidit* A. Fr. Gf rarer.
Stuttgard 1835.

Opere di Giordano Bruno, da Adolf o Wagner, 2 vols. Lipsia 1830. This
edition of Bruno's Italian works is now superseded by the critical text of
P. de Lagarde, Gottingen 1868. 2 vols. 8vo.

Vila di Giordano Bruno da Nolo, da Domenico Berti, 1868.

Giordano Bruno o La Religion* del Pensiero, da David Levi. Torino 1887.

Jordano Bruno, par Christian Bartholmess, 2 vols., 8vo. Par. 1846.

Giordano Bruno 1 8 Weltanschauung und Verh&ngniss, etc., von Dr. H. Brunn-
hofer. 1882.

Gli eretici d Italia, Discorsi da Csesare Cantu, 8 vols. Torino 1868.

Die philosophische Weltanschauung, von M. Carriere. 1847, pp. 865-494.

Leben und Lehrmeinungen beruhmter Physiker, von Bixner und Siber. Heft
v. 1824.

Life of Giordano Bruno, by I. Frith, London. Trubner, 1887.

Copernico e vicende del Sistema Copernicano in Italia. Berti, 1876.

B. Teltsio ossia studi storici su V Idea delta Natura net resorgimento Italiano,
di Francesco Florentine Vol. ii. pp. 41-111.

Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa, von Dr. F. J. Clemens. 1847.

Saggi di Critica, di Bertando Spaventa. Vol. i. 139-256.

Giordano Bruno la vita e V uomo, di B. Mariano. Roma 1881.

Libri, G., Uittoire dee Sciences Mathematiques en Italie. Vol. iv.

Die LebensgescJiichte Giordano Bruno's, von Dr. C. Sigwart. 1880.

Tiraboschi, Storia di Letteratura Italian*, vii. pt. 2, p. 689, etc.

Storia delta Letteratura Italiana net Secolo XVI, di U. A. Cane 11 o. 1880.

Ginguene, Histoire LitUraire d* Italie. Vol. vii. chap. xxxi.

Settembrini, Lezioni di Letteratura Italiana. ii. p. 400.

Bruno's chief Lullian Treatises are quoted from Lulli opera. Argentorati
1651.

Grundlinien einer Ethik bei Giordano Bruno, von £. B. Hartung. 1878.

215

r

246 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Arundel. Yes, when we want to start a new Secular Calen-
dar of Saints and Martyrs after the model of Auguste Comte's.

Miss Leycester. I object altogether to the distinction
between secular and sacred as a~ % definition of martyrdom.
Every genuine martyrdom — the sacrifice of life for truth —
is sacred. Sokrates and Giordano Bruno are, in my estima-
tion, just as sacred as any martyr in the Christian calendar.

Abundel. • But surely the kind of truth for which the
martyr suffers must enter as a prime consideration into the
meritoriousness of the. act. The distinction must be enormous
between a death endured for the noblest and highest truth,
and for some trivial distinction or petty belief — it may even
be a falsehood — or an emanation of the grossest ignorance or
superstition.

Miss Leycester. From the sufferer's own point of view
there can be no such distinction ; and it is that, I apprehend,
which determines the fact of his martyrdom. What you con-
sider a petty belief, he evidently regards as a matter of the
greatest moment. He attests his conviction in the most solemn
and authentic manner by sealing it with his death.

Arundel. Your apprehension, Miss Leycester, is, I conceive,
a misapprehension. Take the derivation of the word martyr.
It means simply a witness, i.e. an attestator of some truth:
the stress being evidently placed upon the truth so attested.
For truth, in the sense of a verity which is eternal, must
always be of greater importance than the witness who pleads
it as his own personal conviction. It is the holiness or truth
of the cause that elevates what might otherwise be merely an
act of fanaticism and perversity, to the sublime category of
self-sacrifice and martyrdom. There are people in this country,
for instance, who still persist in believing that the earth is
flat, or who are fully persuaded of the supernatural power
of witches. Suppose them ready to suffer death for their

The last named brochure is one of the many monographs on detached
portions of Bruno's works and teaching which have appeared in Germany,
as well as in France and Italy, during the last half century. It would be
obviously impossible to enumerate here even their titles.

Of Bruno's works there is a fair Bibliography appended to Miss Frith's
Life, pp. 810-877. Also a list of Bruno authorities.

Giordano Bruno. 247

beliefs, we could scarcely dignify them with the name of
martyrs.

Miss Leycester. I am not so sure of that. Suppose e.g.
they desired to test liberty of thought and speculation, they
would then be martyrs of Free-thought. No one has a right
to interdict beliefs, however absurd, if they are conscientiously
held and do no harm to the rest of the community. I am by
no means a believer in Spiritualism ; but if I were, and in con-
sequence were compelled to endure social penalties, I should
consider myself a confessor.

Harrington. But a confessor for what? for Spiritualism,
or for freedom of speculation ? In your reply to Arundel you
adroitly contrived to confuse the main motive of the martyr-
dom with incidental considerations not immediately pertaining
to it. If a man is benighted enough to be ready to suffer for
the sake of witchcraft, we cannot easily credit him with the
enlightenment which could alone make Free-thought a pre-
ponderating motive for self-denial. But all the special plead-
ing in the world cannot make the real cause for which a man
suffers anything else but a matter of profound importance.
We cannot for a moment dispute the immense disparity, as to
the moral value of the act, between a man who dies fighting
in a drunken brawl, and the patriot who falls in defending his
country. The test is the worth of the deed — its ethical or
other value to humanity — not the persuasion of the doer. The
Hindoo widow when she mounts the pyre and sacrifices her
life to her deceased husband, and Giordano Bruno when he
goes manfully to the stake, are both animated by a principle
of duty ; though, judged ab extra, and by high social and moral \
standards, one is an act of debasing superstition, the other of )
noble heroism. As to the relative merits of martyrs of reli-/
gion and those of Free-thought, they may, I think, be allocated
in this way. All conscientious sufferers for what they be-
lieve to be truth, leaving out fools and fanatics, are in reality
e.g. Christian martyrs. Those who take part in producing theifN
sufferings, no matter what their creed, are veritable Anti-/
christs. Thus Pope Clement VIII., with a few more of his
Pontifical brethren, and Philip II., may be coupled with Nero

248 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

and Domitian; while those holy butchers Torquemada and
Sanseverina have their true prototypes in the executioners of
the early Christians — perhaps in the starved and raging beasts
which devoured them in the Roman amphitheatre.

Miss Leycestee. Romanism, if it were honest, ought to
have two calendars of Confessors and Martyrs — a Creditor and
a Debtor calendar — martyrs who suffered for Romanism, or
for the spurious Christianity of which it is the development,
and martyrs by Romanism. Perhaps it would not be prudent
to ask which would be the longer ; and a close comparison of
the two might be invidious ; but a list comprising such men as
Paleario, Carnesecchi, Bruno, Galileo, Vico, Valdes, Campanella,
Vanini, would require some strong names to match them.

Arundel. Cordially as we all detest religious tyranny and
intolerance, we must, I think, confess there are precedents for
it in nature. I was reading, the other day, of certain savages
who, when a member of the tribe falls sick, gather about him
and beat out his brains with their clubs. * Behold,' I said to
myself, * a parallel to the fate of Bruno and Vanini.' Physical
infirmities in the one case, and what are assumed to be mental
diseases in the other, are both thought worthy of death,
though it must be admitted the diagnosis of the latter is
neither so easy nor certain as that of the former.

Trevor. A complimentary comparison, Arundel. The
savages of the Fiji Islands (let us say) paralleled with supreme
Pontiffs, Ecclesiastical Councils, and the Holy Office. But you
might have penetrated still lower strata of the animal kingdom
for precedents of that kind. Herds of wild animals will gather
round a sick member and gore and trample it to death ; while
bees will destroy every individual of a whole brood when born
with an imperfect organization. It is merely the operation
of the sublime law — the survival of the fittest — effected in this
instance by means of their own exertions in murdering the
unfit. An application of this principle of survivals to dog-
matic development would be interesting both as regards indi-
viduals and beliefs. Thus Arius must succumb while Athana-
sius triumphs. Nestorius must suffer while Cyril remains
dominant. Savonarola is burnt while Borgia survives as

Giordano Bruno. 249

Pope. Bruno is martyred while Mocenigo and Sanseverina
remain flourishing. Or, applying the principle to dogmas —
the Copernican system is suppressed, that the historical truth
of the 1st chapter of Genesis may be saved. The numberless
worlds of Bruno are tabooed, in order that the veracious doc-
trines of purgatory, transubstantiation, the perpetual Vir-
ginity of Mary may flourish in their stead.

Miss Leycester. Well, we must not forget that doctrines
or mental survivals, have the whole future in which to
develop. With the leading thinkers of our own day the
starry world of Bruno, e.g., is a much more indisputable
truth than transubstantiation. In order to justify our appli-
cation of the law of * the survival of the fittest ' to dogmas,*
we ought to know what the * survivals ' of 600 years hence are
destined to be.

Harrington. What is remarkable in Bruno's countless worlds
is the rapidity with which he evolved them from the newer
astronomy. He made the Copernican system the Pegasus of j
transcendental idealism. Never was there a more abrupt
transition from physics to metaphysics. The fact of the
earth being a planet, and the existence of innumerable suns "
and planetary systems, was the Jacob's ladder by which he
scaled, or tried to scale, infinity. Hence Bruno is the father of
all modern idealists and pantheists ; beginning with Spinoza
and ending with the latest development of Hegelianism.

Arundel. I confess it taxes my patience to observe how
readily and ungratefully such idealists as a rule ignore the
ordinary means and aids by which they have achieved their
exalted position. They remind me of those unhappy wretches
who having induced by opium smoking a condition of rapture,
are inclined to regard their temporary exhilaration as if it
were their normal state of existence, and ignore the material
means of drug and pipe by which it was in reality produced ;
or men who, by the help of ladders, having scaled some lofty
tower, immediately proceed to thrust down their means of
ascent, and rejoicing in their elevation, regard it as their
natural destiny, and proceed to affirm the non-existence of all
ladders. The question to ask in such a case is : either ladders

256 The Skeptics of tfie Italian Renaissance.

exist, or how came you there ? To the idealist the objection
is fatal : your abstraction has been gained by means of concretes.
The lowest rung of your metaphysical ladder is placed on
Terra Firma. By no other means could you have attained
your sublime and ethereal position.

Trevor. Not so fatal as you suppose. The idealist might
say, what Plato and many of his disciples did say, that his
sublime creations as you would call them, were not in reality
originated by themselves; but on the contrary were inborn
or intuitive, all that their senses did being merely to call their
attention to the fact. They might therefore plead that they
knew nothing of concretes or of Terra Firma as starting points
or conditions of knowledge. The inspired vision of the mystic
is to him a much more infallible basis of conviction than his
physical senses can be to the natural philosopher.

Miss Leycester. I think you are really too hard on
Idealists, Mr. Arundel. For my part I quite sympathize with
Bruno and his abstractions; so far at least as I understand
them. His * Infinite ' and ' One ' I regard as a kind of intel-
lectual crucible, or witches' cauldron, into which he threw all
divisions, contradictions, mutations in time and space, what-
ever, in short, conflicted with his philosophical sense of all-
completeness and inclusiveness ; and in which, by the magic
power of the fancy, they were transmuted and etherealized
into the purest and most rarefied of all conceivable abstractions.
'In his case as in others, idealism is the imagination of
philosophy, and it seems to me both arbitrary and unjust to
exclude l lovers of wisdom ' any more than poets and painters
from weaving the web of a brightly coloured fancy. I can
imagine philosophers getting just as tired of the poverty,
monotony and slavish restrictions imposed on them by their
senses, by the inevitable conditions of terrestrial existence, or
by ordinary human opinion, as poets are supposed to be by
thei* humble and prosaic surroundings. Why should not the
philosopher in the words of Keats —

*. . . Let the winged Fancy wander
Though the thought still spread beyond her.'

Trevor (with enthusiasm). Well said, Miss Leycester.

Giordano Bruno. 251

4 Oh, sweet Fancy, let her loose,
Phenomena are spoilt by use.
Where's the sense that doth not fade,
Too much questioned ? Where's the . . .*

(pauses suddenly.)

Harrington (laughing). Go on, Doctor. You are leaving
your adaptation at its most interesting point. I am anxious
to hear what philosophical turn you can give to Keats' next
enquiry.

Trevor. The trochaics of Keats do not easily accommodate
themselves to philosophy. Poetry, as you know, came into
the field of language before philosophy, and appropriated all
the simple and easy terms to her own use, leaving to her
learned successor nothing but the dry stubble of the harvest.

Arundel. True, Doctor ; but please to remember that phi-
losophy has made amends for her tardiness by taking measures
to secure a private linguistic harvest of her own; though,
judging by the crop, I should not augur favourably of the
seed.

Mrs. Harrington. This comes of discussing a poet-philoso-
pher like Bruno. You are all in danger of being carried away
on the wings of imagination and similitude. In order to
bring you down once more to the Terra Firma } which Mr.
Arundel says is the starting-point of all idealism, allow me to
ask what are the best authorities for Bruno's life. Charles
gave Florence and myself a French work by M. Bartholmiss
to get up the subject ; telling us that it was good for the man
and his character, but valueless for the events and dates of
his life.

Trevor. I would not go so far as to say that Bartholm&ss
is valueless for the events of Bruno's life ; though no doubt his
dates are incorrect. The main incidents of Bruno's life have
long been the common property of all his biographers who
have studied his extant works, in which they aro occasionally
mentioned. Bartholm&ss's merit is to have done this with a
fulness and exactitude which have been excelled by no writer
on the subject. His work has also other claims on every
student of Bruno. He writes in a tender sympathetic manner

252 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance,

of the poor martyr-philosopher, and yet does not allow com-
miseration for his fate to warp his critical estimate of his
teachings. He also possesses an enormous command of the
literature — German, Italian, Spanish and English, as well as
his native French — needed to elucidate the subject. That, in
point of chronological correctness his work is inferior to that
of Professor Berti, is not his own fault. The latter was
fortunate enough to discover a quantity of documents, origi-
nally belonging to the Archives of Venice, and which contain
the various interrogatories to which Bruno was subjected
before he was delivered by the authorities at Venice to the
Inquisition at Rome. The most important discovery revealed
by these precious records is the duration of Bruno's imprison-
ment, which all his biographers had previously thought lasted
for about two years, but which were really protracted for a
period of eight years. If we could only obtain access to all
the records of the Holy Office at Rome, we should probably
find other important documents, as well as several of Bruno's
lost works. But that is " a find " which I fear the history of
modern philosophy is not destined to realize for some time.
The Inquisition, like every vulgar murderer, is fully alive to
the expediency of destroying or suppressing so far as possible,
all records or mementoes by which its nefarious deeds might
be brought to fuller light. To the discovery of the Venetian
papers we must ascribe the suggestion of Professor Berti's
work ; for he himself tells us that he would never have under-
taken a task so well performed by Bartholmess, had it not
been for the large fund of fresh information, including what
might be called an autobiography of Bruno, which those docu-
ments disclosed. Perhaps I ought, in enumerating original
authorities, to add the name of Schioppius. This man was a
pervert from Protestantism; and like all perverts, a zealous
enthusiast on behalf of his adopted faith. His testimony is
of some importance in the case of Bruno ; for he was an eye-
witness of his death. On the evening of the 17th of February,
1600, and not many hours after Bruno's ashes had been
scattered to the winds, Schioppius wrote a full account of the
event to Conrad Rittershausen, a German friend. The letter

Giordano Bruno. 253

is valuable for several reasons, as we shall find when we come
to the last melancholy page of Bruno's life.

Miss Leycester. Melancholy, in one sense no doubt; but
gloriously triumphant in another. Bruno, like Campanella
and Yanini, seems to have foreseen the stake and the faggot
as the probable, and even fitting, consummation of a life-long
struggle against dogmatic intolerance and oppression. What
to outsiders might well have appeared a lurid and terrible
flame of punishment, those heroic spirits regarded but as the
candle which lit them to bed. They manifest not only a
contempt for torture, but even a kind of greediness of it such
as we read of in early Christian martyrology. In the enthu-
siasm of liberty they are like people intoxicated with an over-
mastering passion, entirely insensible to bodily pain. I wonder,
by the way, if this stern, earnestly thoughtful, intellectual
face, prefixed to Bartholmfess's Life and Wagner's Works, was
really Bruno's: if so, one might easily comprehend his life,
if not, in the sixteenth century, predict his death.

Tbevoe. I am sorry to say that the traditional portrait (of
which you may see three different impressions in these books
on the table) is not well authenticated. Professor Berti dis-
trusts it, though all his researches have hitherto failed in
discovering a more genuine likeness. He gives this description
of Bruno : * short in stature, agile in frame, of meagre body,
a thin and pallid face, thoughtful expression ; a glance both
piercing and melancholy ; hair and beard between black and
chestnut ; a ready, rapid, imaginative tongue, accompanied by
vivacious gestures, a manner courteous and gentle. Sociable,
amiable and pleasant in conversation, like the Italians of the
south; adapting himself without difficulty to the tastes,
usages and habits of another; open and candid, both with
friends and foes, and as far from rancour, and revenge, as he
was quickly moved to anger.' * The Professor adds in a note
that this description does not fully harmonize with the tradi-
tional portrait. I am inclined to differ from him on this point.
Allowing a few years further thought and development to

1 Berti, Vita di Giordano Bruno, p. 296.

254 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

have passed over his head, deepening somewhat the lines in
his face (for the portrait is evidently that of a young man),
and adding the dark- brown beard of his later years, w&
shall have a very adequate representation of the lineaments
and character Professor Berti has given us.

Harrington. But on what authority does this traditional
portrait rest ?

Trevor. So far as I have been able to trace it, I find it
first in Rixner and Siber's volume on Giordano Bruno, which
forms part of their interesting collection: Leben und Lehr-
meinungen beriihmter PhysUcer am Ende des XVI. und am
Anfange des XVII. Jahrhunderts. This was published in
1824, and the authors tell us that they took the portrait from
the * interesting collection of Herr Wirthmann in Munich.' l
The form of the likeness was small 8vo, and the name of the
engraver was erased. They add that it probably was once a
title plate to one of Bruno's works. We shall find that Bruno
enjoyed considerable celebrity for some years both in Paris
and London, which would make his portrait a matter of public
interest. Some day, perhaps, the original engraving and date
may be discovered.

Mrs. Harrington. I have been trying to make out what
dress Bruno is represented in, but have quite failed.

Trevor. That is the white cowl or hood of the Dominican
order, a garment like the domino still worn in masquerades.
At that time it was common both to laymen and clerics,
whence the proverb * the hood does not make the monk.' *

Miss Leycester. The more I gaze upon his noble but
somewhat sad and stern face, 3 the more reason do I find for
regarding it as an authentic likeness of Bruno. At least I
should never give up this portrait, which I have long admired,

1 Rixner und Siber, Heft. v. p. iv.

* Comp. Rixner und Siber, loc. cit., p. iv.

8 Mr. Maurice, in his Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (Modern Part,
p. 165), ascribes to his physical beauty some of the enormous influence which
Bruno wielded. ( Grace and beauty of every kind speak to his soul, and exer-
cise a dominion over him which one would fear must have often been too much
for his judgment, and his loftier aspirations. His countenance testifies how
mightily he must have been attracted, and how many he must have attracted. 1

Giordano Bruno. 255

for any other even though better authenticated, if the latter
did not convey with equal distinctness my ideal of the man.
Among my many notions which Charles there is pleased to
call paradoxical, I entertain a strong feeling that the highest
kind of portraiture is that which gives the man's mind, his
intellect, his spiritual character ; unless the facial lineaments
clearly and fully indicate this, I think their precise configu-
ration a matter of secondary importance. A portrait should
be a likeness of a man's soul, not merely of his body, as
Napoleon once remarked to the painter David, * No one cares
whether the likeness of a great man resembles him or not, if
only his spirit lives in it.' Hence all portrait-painters ought
to have the fullest and most intimate acquaintance with their
subject's mental characteristics, as well as the art of transferr-
ing mind to canvass or paper. Of course every genuine artist \,
should be both a philosopher and an idealist. ... I do /
not know a more painful disappointment than that which one
feels when, after ideally constructing a likeness of some one
of the world's greatest minds, we are shown as its authentic
physical counterpart an ordinary expressionless face which
perhaps does not suggest a single one of the attributes with
which we have mentally invested it. I have never yet seen
a single portrait of Shakespeare which at all conveys my
notion of him.

Arundel. But suppose, Miss Leycester, that the subject of
the portrait has no superior mental characteristics to boast
of; you would not, I presume, interdict the representation of
homely features conjoined to qualities which, though just as
ordinary, may to acquaintances and intimate associates be of
sterling worth? Moreover Nature, in the manifold products
of her laboratory, displays a capricious disregard of idealist
notions and wishes. How often e.g. do the features of a man
of genius suggest rather a commonplace character ; and on the
other hand striking features are sometimes found allied with
an ordinary or even inferior type of character. I know a
remarkable instance in a clergyman of high social, but inferior
intellectual status, who possesses all the external attributes of
genius, but apparently none of its real properties. As a

256 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

mutual friend says of him, he always looks as if he were on
the point of saying or doing something wonderful, but — it
never comes.

Miss Leycesteb. Of course if a man has no great or strik-
ing mental characteristics, and possesses no public but merely
domestic virtues, he has no business to have his portrait
published to the world. The world has no more concern with
his face than it has with the quality of his clothes or the price
of the tea he drinks. As to the statement that intellectual
features are often found in combination with a commonplace
character, I am not at all inclined to admit it. Men of real
mental power cannot help betraying the fact in their physi-
ogonomy. Such at least is my experience, judging from living
men.

Harrington. To an idealist nothing is impossible. Take
this portrait of Bruno for instance. The chief characteristics
it suggests to me are audacity and determination. It is a
vivid impersonation of the quality indicated by his favourite
maxim —

' Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.'

A If his features were not so refined I could imagine him a
V leader of Communists or Socialists. The face is that of a man
at war with the convictions, laws, or social usages of the
world. Hence your ideal portrait-painting, Florence, must
needs be an art confined to yourself; no one can possibly share
in it. Your picture-gallery of the great minds of the world is
solely and absolutely yours; and as such it is beyond both
discussion and criticism. You conceive the lineaments; you
define, if definition can be used of such a process, the expres-
sions ; you shape, contour, and no doubt modify them after your
fancy ; you make the finished product — when it is finished,
for idealists who do not stereotype their creations on canvas
or paper are perpetually remoulding, and recolouring their
productions — the representation of what you conceive to be
striking qualities. But such a portrait, if made perceptible to
others, might be far from resembling not only the particular
individual it purported to depict, but every other man that
ever lived. The reductio ad absurdum of your art would be

Giordano Bruno. 257

achieved when you joined together a number of attributes and
requested a painter to embody them in an ideal impersonation.
Take Shakespeare, for instance, whose likeness you say you
have never yet seen. You might give your enumeration of
the qualities which you think compose his myriad-mindedness,
to some great painter, and say, Paint me a vivid and life-like
embodiment of all these varied attributes.

Miss Leyoester. A proceeding of which I should take care
not to be guilty, even if I could find a competent artist who
would be willing to engage in such a task. I should fear the
almost inevitable discrepancy between his creation and my
own. As to such a commission being a reductio ad abmrdum
of idealism, my conceptions are formed in precisely the same
way as all ideas are engendered, viz. by the plastic power of
intellect or imagination. Every mind worthy of the name is
an ideal picture gallery, the slow and sometimes expensive
accumulation of much time and labour, possibly containing
like all such collections, some few good pictures, together with
a large proportion of rubbish; but all so far valuable and
unique that they bear the indelible impress of one's own
individuality. The main difference between myself and other
people is that they are ready to exchange at a moment's notice
their idealizations, no matter how carefully constructed, for
any realization submitted to them with soqae pretext of
authority. Tell them, e.g. this is an undoubtedly authentic
likeness of Shakspeare, or Bruno, or Augustine, or any other
of the world's worthies, and they immediately hasten to remove
their own mental creation, perhaps the most valuable in their
whole gallery, in order to make room for the new comer.
Now this sacrifice of mind to matter, of faith to sight, I am
only willing to make when the visible picture is, as is this
traditional Bruno-likeness, the best conceivable rendering of
my conception of the man's spiritual qualities. An ideal
truth, or what appears such to you, is greatly preferable to
an actuality which you are not only unable to approve, but
which is directly opposed to your most cherished convictions.
My experience has long taught me that artistic realism fre-
quently serves the confiding idealist the trick of ( old lamps for

vol. 1. s

258 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

new. For myself I know the wonderful virtues of the * old
lamp/ and I decline to make the exchange.

Mrs. Harrington. We are, I think, wandering somewhat
rom Bruno. Among other qualities, his portrait suggests to
me the idea of a man fated to die a martyr's death, as Lavater
is said to have remarked of Vandyke's likeness of Charles* I.
After all, the crown and halo of martyrdom are not the un-
meaning insignia which some people suppose. Who would
not rather have been Bruno, even with that hour of excruciat-
ing agony, than his judges and executioners, destined to the
eternal execration of all tolerant and Christ- like minds.

Harrington. Natural as may be our feelings of anger and
disgust at such inhuman and intolerant proceedings as the
martyrdom of Bruno, they ought not, I think, to be totally
devoid of pity for the poor misguided wretches who could so
far misinterpret the spirit and life of Christianity. To expend
unconditional, or perpetual, hatred on deeds motived by pro-
found ignorance, and a perverted conception of duty, seems to
me unjust. A court of the Inquisition, sentencing a heretic to
torture and death, I place in the same category with a secular
court of the same period gravely deliberating on the character-
istics of witchcraft, and committing perhaps some tender and
delicate woman, like La Esmeralda of Victor Hugo's Notre
Dame de Paris, to the rack, and the stake or gibbet. I at least
strive, though not always successfully, to share the mournful
calm with which a similar mockery of justice and humanity
is contemplated by Christ. l The days will come when whoso-
ever killeth you will think that he doeth God service, but
these things will they do unto you because they have not
known the Father nor Me.'

Trevor then began his paper : —

******

/ In the century that elapsed between Pomponazzi and Bruno, momen-
tous changes were taking place in the mental history of Italy.. Partly
these were continuations of the intellectual movements we have ex-
amined on former occasions, partly the result of fresh motive forces.
As to the first, the general progress of the Renaissance, which we saw
in full flow during the former epoch, may be said to have reached, for
the time, its greatest height ; and in Italy to betray some symptoms of

Giordano Bruno. 259

retreating. But in other countries — France, Germany, England— the
tidal wave is still acquiring greater volume and momentum, besides
imparting a reciprocal reflex agitation to the impulse which first put
it in motion ; just as the wave circlets, when a stone is thrown into a
pond, reach the shore, and then run back to their primal centre of
motion. The opposition to Aristotle and scholasticism, of which we
have seen traces in Ockam, Petrarca and Pomponazzi, continues to be
asserted by the free spirits of France and Italy as an essential pre-
requisite^ of philosophic freedom. The German Reformation, though
its leaders are now disappearing from the scene, is still further extend-
ing its influence. It is the fortune of Bruno to come in successive
contact with the three chief types of sixteenth-century Protestant-
ism. 1 As Englishmen, we have no cause for self-congratulation
in his experience that Wittenberg was more favourable than Oxford
to freedom of thought ; and, as Protestants, we may admit that
its various systems, and the characters it sometimes evolved, gave
too much room for Bruno's nicknaming Reformers, Deformers.
One effect of this increasing development of Free-thought, both
religious and secular, was to add a new source of suspicion and
terror to the hierarchy of the Romish Church. Proscription and per-
secution took the place of the half contemptuous, half sympathetic
toleration of Free-thought, which marked the leaders of the Church in
the preceding century. The enthusiasm with which classical Re-
vivalism was first received by liberal and enlightened Romanists, died
away, as its effects on the creed and polity of the Church began to be
more fully developed and appreciated. The formation of the Jesuits
and other religious bodies, designed to counteract the floods of heresy
and Free-thought which were spreading over Europe, and to institute
a new and more vigorous propaganda than Romanism had ever yet
attempted, was a proof that a reaction against liberal culture had set
in and added a new element of danger to Free-thinkers. Our subject
presents us with one victim of this ecclesiastical alarm and intoler-
ance ; and we shall shortly have another before us, in Vanini.

The growth of the sympathy with and affection for Nature, the
commencement of which we have already noticed, is another prominent
feature of the period we are about to consider. This is only another
mode of affirming the continued development of the Naturalism we
have already noticed; and which was partly the cause, partly the
effect, of the decline of ecclesiastical influence which constituted the
chief feature of the Italian Renaissance. But in the fifteenth century
this Naturalism assumes a broader and more multiform character.

1 I.e. Calvinism at Geneva, Lutheranism at Wittenberg, and Anglicanism
at Oxford and London,

I

260 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Nature is not now regarded, as it was by Petrarca and succeeding
poets, from a merely aesthetic point of view as an object of wonder and
admiration — a fitting subject for picturesque word-painting and tender,
graceful poetry ; nor only as by Boccaccio and other Free-thinkers, as
a standard for human conduct — a plea for genuine liberty to be sub*
stituted for the depraved morals and excessive licence of the Church ;
nor again was it contemplated only from a theological point of view,
whether as represented by the pantheism of Nicolas of Cusa and
others, or by the natural theology of Raymund of Sabien<Je, or by
the theosophy and magic of such men as Telesius and Cardan,
Thinkers were now coming to regard Nature not as a divinity, to be
distantly contemplated and reverently worshipped, but as an object
of investigation and research — not as a verbal abstraction, but as an
assemblage of numerous allied concretes, each inviting, to a certain
extent, experiment and analysis. In other words, Nature hitherto
conjoined with poetry, theology, theosophy and magic, is now becoming
allied with experimental science. It is this alliance, recognised
almost simultaneously by leading thinkers in France, Germany and
England, as well as in Italy, that I have termed the newer motive
force by which Bruno was stirred. 1 The earliest experimental
science in Italy was the legitimate new birth of the bastard science
Astrology. Our subject was among the first who comprehended the
enormous import, not only for science, but for theology, of the Coperni-
can system. It is not too much to say that it completely inverted
the relative positions hitherto maintained of earth and heaven. All
former systems had declared the earth to be the centre of the universe,
not only in astronomy, but in philosophy and theology as well. Now
the earth was reduced to a secondary and tributary position. The
degradation could hardly have been pleasing to those who had arro-
gated to themselves excessive earthly dominion; and who had affirmed
the supposed centre of the universe to contain central and universal
beliefs for every portion of its unbounded circumference. The states-
men and functionaries of a power suddenly reduced from absolute
supremacy to subjection, must of course share the degradation of
their state ; and the fates of Bruno, Galileo and Campanella, not to
mention numerous predecessors and successors, attest the fearful
vengeance which such officials would be prepared to exact from the
authors of a change so ruinous to themselves.

Such was the intellectual environment into which Giordano Bruno
was born. We shall find that his imagination, and many-sided intel-
lectual sympathies reflect every phase of the great mental movements
of his time ; excepting the superstitious reverence for antiquity which

1 Cf. Libri, Hisioirt dee Sciences Mathematiquet in Mali*, vol. iv. p. 28, etc

Giordano Bruno. 261

still characterized some Italian humanists. The pantheistic teach-
ings of Avicenna and Cardinal de Cusa — the skeptical teaching of
the latter, and generally of all the leading spirits of the Italian
Renaissance — the hostility to Aristotelianism and scholasticism of
Petrarca — the varied study of Nature initiated by different schools of
prior speculation — the mystical superstition of Raymund Lulli — all
find a place and an eager response in the large intellect and fervid
imagination of Bruno. Hence few thinkers can be named whose
works and speculations cover so large a chronological area. On
the one hand, his thoughts stretch themselves into the darkness of
the middle ages ; on the other hand, they embrace some of the latest
phases of German transcendentalism. No other fifteenth-century
thinker has sown a harvest which is not all housed even in our day ;
and the abundant gleanings of which will no doubt occupy kindred
spirits for centuries to come.

Bruno was born at Nola in 1548 or 1550; of noble lineage, say both
Bartholmess and Berti ; of poor parents, rejoin other biographers. 1
The former is, I think, the more probable, though the matter is
of no great consequence; and it is not the only point in Bruno's
life which we must leave in uncertainty. The house in which he
was brought up was situate at the foot of Mount Cicala, 9 noted for its
wine, its fertility and genial climate. There he was probably also
born; but that we have no means of ascertaining. His father's name
was Giovanni, and his profession a soldier ; his mother's name was
Fraulissa Savolina. His own baptismal name was Filippo, which he
changed into Giordano when he assumed a religious habit. 3 The
natural environment of the young child curiously corresponds with
his disposition and his destiny in after life. Bartholmess indeed ap-
plies the maxim of Tasso, —

' La Terra . . .
Simili a se gli abitator, produce,'

to all the inhabitants of the district round Nola and Naples. ( The
soil of Nola,' he says, ' is volcanic, as is its atmosphere, its water,
its black and thick wine, which has the significant name of Mangia
guerra ' (the Fire-eater). 4 However true this may be of the general
population of Naples, it certainly is true of more than one eminent
name connected with the district. In different degrees it is true of
Vanini, Valdez, Telesius, Campanella and Ochino, but truest of all of
Giordano Bruno. 5 His excitable disposition, fervid imagination, un-

1 Berti, p. 86, note 2. • Op. Ital., ii. p. 152; Berti, Vila, p. 87.

* Berti, Vita, p. 85. < Bartholmess, i. p. 26.

5 Cf. Berti, Vila, p. 41, who says that in Nola, of all the oities of Magna
Gratia, the culture and general refining influences of the Greek-Latin oiviliza-

262 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

tiring restlessness, may well be called volcanic ; while his works,
poured forth under the influence of intense feeling, and carrying de-
struction to much of the assumed learning, and settled convictions of
the time, may be likened to so many streams of lava.

Of his youth we know scarce anything reliable ; nothing more, in
fact, than the occasional retrospect which he furnishes in later works,
especially in the Venetian documents published by Berti. Two pro-
minent characteristics marked it. (1) A strong feeling for Nature,
/and an imaginative interpretation of her facts and processes. (2) A
I skeptical distrust of his senses ; and probably of some of the beliefs
\$vhich were sought to be impressed on his youthful intellect. With
these germs of Free-thought was combined, somewhat later, a dread
/of, and contempt for, political tyranny and ambition, and an unquench-
able thirst for freedom — the natural product of the scenes of cruelty
and oppression which marked the government of Naples in those days. 1

Where Bruno acquired his early education we are not told. Pro-
bably in the school of some convent, either in Nola or in the imme-
diate neighbourhood ; but at the age of ten or eleven years, having
perhaps exhausted these educational resources, he departed for
Naples to complete his education in logic and humane letters.

As the next step in his career, we hear of his entering the convent
of St. Domenico Maggiore in Naples. 1 The motives which induced
him to take this step are not easy to ascertain. The only openings
for ambitious young men in the Naples of the sixteenth century were
the army, the law, and the Church. Bruno's preference for the last
may have been dictated by his love of learned leisure and contempla-
tion. 8 This was no doubt the motive which actuated so many of the
thinkers of that period to join one or other of the monastic orders.
Telesius e.g. early retired into a convent of Benedictines ; and Cam-
panella, his more famous pupil, became a member of the Dominican

tion were most powerful. What is more remarkable, on the common theory
which makes Bruno the father of modern Idealism, is that its birthplace was
so near the native home of Greek Idealism — the far-famed Elea which gave to
Greek philosophy Xenophanes, Parmenides and Zeno. This local connexion
with some of the greatest thinkers of antiquity was duly prized by Bruno, who
frequently dwells with complacency on the similarity of his speculations to
those of the Eleatics (Comp. Bartholmess, ii. p. 810). See also a work on this
very subject that has recently appeared, DeW Essere e del Conoacere, studt su
Parmenide Platone e Rosmini d% Oiuseppi Buroni. Torino 1878.

1 On the state of Naples in Bruno's youthful days, compare Bartholmess, i.
p. 27, etc.

* This is still one of the most remarkable religious houses in Naples. See
Prof. Berti's description, p. 48.

* Eraici Furori, op. Ital., Ed. Wagner, ii. p. 813.

Giordano Bruno. 263

order. Besides, Bruno's instructors from his earliest years had been
the monks ; and it is not wonderful if they imbued his young mind
with a liking for their own profession. Professor Berti supposes that
the fame and influence of Aquinas in Naples may also have contri-
buted somewhat to his decision, as it did to the similar resolve of
Campanella. 1 Not the least remarkable feature in Bruno's conduct,
so far as we are now able to judge it, is his choice of the Dominican
order as his own ; for, as Bartholmess reminds us, this order, together
with the Augustins, was particularly commissioned to use its utmosK
efforts to extinguish the new lights of Protestantism and Free-thoughty
The irony of human destiny certainly seems to have presided at the
admission of the freest thinker of the thirteenth century into the
ranks of the Obscurants (obscuri viri). Bruno's cloistral existence has
received important elucidations from the Venetian documents. It
comprehended altogether a period of thirteen years. The date of his
full orders as priest is given as 1572. 2 But, previous to his taking this
final step, Bruno's intellect had begun to display those qualities which
made him one of the greatest philosophers of the Italian Renaissance ;
or rather the restlessness, independence of thought and vigorous\
imagination, which marked even his childhood, began to assert them-/
selves with increasing vigour and persistency. All his biographers
are agreed, and it is itself transparently obvious, that Bruno was
utterly unsuited for a monastic life. The first and chief quality of
the monk is submission; and intellectual submission was a duty which
Bruno was utterly incapable of understanding, and therefore quite
incompetent to render. During the thirteen years of his cloister life
no less than two processes were issued against him for open and
avowed heresy — for his was not the mutely secretive nature which
could meditate and doubt in silence. We see therefore that his
education, though conducted by Dominicans, was by no means a.
passive and obsequious receptivity. He might have said of his train-
ing in the words of an English poet, to whom he bears no small
degree of similarity, I mean Shelley : —

1 . . . From that hour did I with earnest thought
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore,

1 Campanella, De propriis Libris, Art. I.

8 Berti, Vita, p. 50, who gives the chronology of Bruno's cloister life as
follows : —

1568, Assumes the religious dress.
1564. Profession.

1569, Sub-deacon.

1570, Deacon.
1572, Priest.

264 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn, but from that secret store
Wrought linked armour lor my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind.' 1

The dogmas against which Bruno's youthful but precocious intellect
first stumbled were those of the Trinity, Transubstantiation and the
Immaculate Conception. These would seem to have come into direct
conflict with the opinions he had already formed as to the unvarying
law and order of all natural processes, as well as with the spiritual
idealistic character of his general mode of thought. Other and
extraneous causes also conspired to force these subjects on Bruno's
attention. The kingdom of Naples in the sixteenth century was
famous for its Anti-trinitarianism. It was the home of Socinus,
Ochino, Vermigli, and other Protestants of a more or less Free-think-
ing type. The different modes of interpreting the doctrine formed,
we are told, a favourite topic of conversation in Neapolitan convents
and monasteries. In the spacious garden walks and secluded arbours
of the convent of St. Domenico Maggiore the subject was no doubt
frequently debated by Bruno and his brother monks. Throughout his
life he was passionately fond of controversy ; and was accustomed to
put forth his views freely and without reserve. The persuasion that
truth must be the outcome of all full and impartial discussion was as
deeply engrained in his mind as in that of Milton. 2 The freedom of
his Trinitarian speculations, and what to the hyper-sensitive ears of
his brethren sounded like an indirect defence of Arianism, subjected
him to the charge of heresy. Whatever may have been Bruno's exact
views on the subject at this early period of his life, both his own
confession and the direction of his subsequent intellectual develop-
ment combine to assure us that they were considerably removed from
the narrow path of orthodoxy. He refused to allow in God any other
, distinction but the rational or logical one of His own attributes. In
the person of the Son he recognized the intellect of the Father, and in
that of the Holy Ghost, the Father's Love, or the Soul of the universe.
As he held that the Divinity by its infinite nature could not be joined

1 Revolt of Islam, Dedic. v.

* ' Egli,' says Prof. Berti of Bruno, ' e pieno di fede nel trionfo della verita,
nonostante la guerra accanita che a lei muovono i genii maligni, nonoetante
che egli sia lasoiato solo sulla breccia a pugnare.'— Vita, p. 200. The English
reader need hardly be reminded of the noble confidence in the inherent sove-
reignty of truth which marks Milton's Areopagitica. ' ' Though all the winds
of Doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we
do injuriously ... to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood
grapple, who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? '
— Ar$opagitica t Prose Works, Bonn's Ed., ii. p. 96.

Giordano Bruno. 265

with the finite nature of humanity, his speculations on the Trinity
induced him to deny the doctrine of the Incarnation, 1 at least in the
grossly materialistic sense in which it had been affirmed by the
mediaeval Church. The name of Person he declared inapplicable both
to the Son and to the Holy Ghost ; and he further based his rejection
of it on St. Augustine, who admitted that the term was not ancient,
but novel and of his own time. 2 Such were the thoughts and specu-
lations of the young idealist on the most profound of all mysteries.
Whatever their intrinsic value or demerit, we must acknowledge their
complete congruity with the theories and conclusions of his later
life.

The first process to which Bruno was subjected occurred during his
Noviciate, and was undertaken by the master of the Novices. His
second process befell him after he was in full orders, and was insti-
gated by the Father Provincial. 3 The former transgression might
have been regarded by the authorities as an ebullition of youthful
waywardness. The latter was more serious, as the lapse of a heretic,
already once arraigned if not convicted. The inculpated opinions,
moreover, affected dogmas which, though not found in the actual
teaching of Christ, the Church had long declared to be of supreme
importance. Bruno recognized the danger. He departed secretly
from his beloved Naples, never more to see it ; and took the road to
Rome, where he arrived in 1576. But he was not allowed to escape
thus easily. His superiors, with the keen dogmatic apprehension of
bigots, which is often in exactly inverse ratio to their dull intellectual
comprehension, had clearly discovered Bruno's abilities. Even had
they not ascertained the weakness of some of the links in his chain of
dogma3, his originality and independence of mind would have sufficed
to stamp him as ' dangerous.' Accordingly, Bruno had not been long
at Rome before he learnt that the process he had left behind was soon

1 Berti, Vita, p. 56.

* Ibid., p. 56, note 2. The passage to which Bruno referred is probably from
Book vii. of the De Trinitate. ' Hoc utcumque simile est quia et veteres qui
latine locuti sunt, antequam haberent ista nomina (scilicet personarum vel
substantiarum), qusB non diu est ut in usum venerunt, pro his naturam dice-
bant. 1 — August., Op. om., Par. 1694, vol. ii. p. 852.

8 The ostensible causes of these processes are described by Bruno in words
which strikingly exemplify the atmosphere of suspicion and repression which
pervaded a mediaeval convent : * A Napoli era stato processato duo volte, prima
per haver dato via certe figure e imagini de Santi, e ritenuto un crucefisso solo,
essendo per questo imputato de sprezzar le imagini de Santi, e anoo per haver
detto a un novitio che leggeva la historia delle sette alegrezze in versi, che
cosa voleva far di quel libro, che lo gettasse via, e leggesse piu presto qualche
altro libro, come e la vita de Santi Padri. 1 — Documenti, vii., Berti, Vita, etc.,
pp. 841-2.

266 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

to follow him. Indeed, his case had assumed a worse aspect since he
left Naples; for among the personal effects he abandoned in his hurried
flight, his enemies discovered certain books of Jerome and Chrysostom
which had been prohibited, as annotated by the heretic Erasmus. 1
This secret intelligence alarmed Bruno, who took an early opportunity
of quitting Rome, having first divested himself of his friar's habit,
and again assumed his baptismal name of Philip. Professor Berti
thinks that his flight may have been accelerated by witnessing the
abjuration of Carranza, 2 Archbishop of Toledo, and of Bruno's own
order of Dominicans, who had ventured to protest against the worship
of images and other doctrines of Romanism, as human inventions.
However this may be, Bruno directed his steps to Genoa. Here he
established a school for boys ; and also commenced private readings
with a few adult pupils of the better class, on the Sphere, i.e. Celestial
Geography. He also wrote a treatise on that subject which is now
lost, as well as another work also lost, which seems to have borne
some resemblance in style and subject to his later Dialogues. This
production was called Noah's Ark} It was probably during this
period that Bruno pursued those studies of the Copernican astronomy
which he afterwards incorporated into his system. He did not re-
main long in Genoa : some unknown reason, perhaps the unsatis-
factory nature of his surroundings, or his own inborn restlessness,
impelled him to recommence his wanderings. He repaired first to
the small sea-port Savona; and from thence to Turin. There his
arrival chanced to be about the same time that Tasso paid his memor-
able visit to that town, * a broken down and prematurely aged man,
sorrow in his heart, disease in his limbs, and rags on his back, and
was imprisoned by the Turin authorities on suspicion of being infected
with the plague.' Professor Berti has a brief contrast of the different
dispositions and destinies of the two men, Tasso a Christian and poet
of the Cross, Bruno opposed to every religious symbol. The former,
wearied and disillusionized with the world, ends his days in the retire-
ment of a convent. The latter, starting from a convent, dies on the
scaffold, with eyes averted from the crucifix.

1 Comp. Berti, Vita, p. 56, note 2.

9 For some account of this confessor to Protestantism, see Berti, Vita, p. 57,
note 2. Fuller information may be found in De Castro, Historia de las Protes-
tants Espagnoles, pp. 192-242 ; Cesare Cantu, Oli Eretici <T Italia, ii. p. 824, etc.;
Llorente, Histoire de V Inquisition, iii. 183-815.

8 Professor Berti thinks that this work, V area di Not, which was dedicated
to Pope Pius V., consisted of a symbolical representation of human society by
means of the animals collected in the ark. It is easy to see what scope such a
subject afforded for Bruno's imagination, as well as for his humour and
sarcasm.

Giordano Bruno. 267

Bruno tells us that he did not find Turin to his satisfaction. He
therefore left it and came to Venice. Here he wrote another work,
The Signs of the Times, which he submitted before publication to a
learned and pious Dominican who enjoyed high esteem in Venice.
As the work met with his approval, there was probably nothing in
it very startling or contrary to the received tenets of Romanism.
This work is not alluded to in Bruno's subsequent writings. After
a stay of two months he left Venice and came to Padua. Here he
fell in with certain former acquaintances of his own order, who urged
on him the expediency of again adopting the Dominican habit with-
out re-entering the order. This appears to have been no uncommon
custom in those days, when we are told that in Italy were some 40,000
monks who lived outside their convents. Bruno did not follow the
advice then ; but he did so shortly after, as we shall learn. From
Padua he journeyed to Brescia, where a curious event befel him. A
certain monk had suddenly and unexpectedly become a prophet, a
great theologian, and skilful in languages. His companions, ascrib-
ing such unwonted erudition to diabolical influences, shut the poor
man in prison. Bruno relates, sarcastically, that he cured the man of
his acute attack of learning, and restored him to his former asinine
condition, by means of a draught which purged his melancholic
humours. During a short visit to Bergamo, Bruno again adopted the
Dominican habit, and wore on it his scapular, which he had carefully
preserved. The incident is worth a passing notice as a proof, which
may be extended to his after life, that he had no wish, and saw no
necessity to openly sever himself from his religious order. Bruno's
next remove was to Milan, where he probably made the acquaintance of
Sir Philip Sidney, whom he afterwards knew under brighter auspices
in England. From Milan he once more returned to Turin ; and from
thence he crossed the Alps and came to Chambery. His first plan
was to pursue his road to Lyons ; but hearing an indifferent account
of French convents, he altered his mind, and arrived at Geneva in the
year 1576. \

' The tracks of many proscribed teachers,' says Bartholmess, ' led
Bruno to Geneva.' No doubt the Swiss state had afforded a welcome
sanctuary to independent thinkers. As such it was a ' colluvies
haereticorum ' to the Romanist, and the Canaan of Protestants. But
the genuine sympathies of Geneva were, as Bruno soon experienced,
as narrowly exclusive in one direction as those of extreme Romanism
in another. Bartholmess says, 1 ' The two Churches were governed
by the same principle of jurisdiction — the criminality of heresies.

1 Vol. i. p. 59.

268 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Whoever believed wrongly, that is to say, otherwise than the Holy
Office or the Venerable Consistory, believed nothing ; and he who
believed not, committed the crime of treason to God, and deserved
capital punishment. Persecution hence became a sacred duty, an
act agreeable to God. The greater its intolerance the greater its
value.' We shall presently see, in the case of Ramus, something of
this intolerance on the part of Theodore Beza. Indeed, that great
reformer was convinced that the toleration of alien, i.e. un-German
opinions was nothing less than a devilish dogma (diabolicum dogma).
A Church administered on these principles was not likely to prove
a haven of rest to our unquiet and free-spirited philosopher. It
seems probable that Bruno had for some reason misapprehended
the nature of Genevan freedom ; for according to his own statement
his chief motive in coming thither was a wish * to live quietly and
securely.' Such was his answer to a famous Neapolitan refugee of
high standing in Geneva (Caracciolo Marquis of Vico l ) f who sought
him a few days after his arrival, for the purpose of ascertaining
his religious opinions, and his reasons for coming to the head
quarters of Calvinism. The measure of religious liberty he was
likely to enjoy there was foreshadowed in this interview, which
must have opened his eyes to the fact that the Inquisition of the
Holy Office was not the only court of the kind in Christendom.
The propriety of becoming a disciple of John Calvin was im-
mediately urged on him. On Bruno's excusing himself, the suggestion
was proffered that he had better put off his Dominican habit and
dress like a layman. This he was enabled to do by the efforts of a
few Italian refugees, who clubbed together to procure him a suit of
clothes, with a sword, etc. For the space of two and a half months
Bruno obtained a precarious livelihood by correcting for the press,
living all the while quite aloof from the narrow and bigoted society

1 Galeazzo Caracciolo was one of the most remarkable converts to Calvinism
in the sixteenth century. The only son of one of the noblest families in Naples,
the nephew of a Pope (Paul IV.), the darling ohild of his father, who cherished
on his behalf the most ambitious views, the husband of a noble and wealthy
lady. The father of six children, Chamberlain at the Court of Naples,
Cavalier of the Empire, in which his father held a distinguished position,
the idol of his many and influential friends, he forsook all his honours and
emoluments, abandoned his parents, wife and children, all of whom he tenderly
loved, surrendered his brilliant prospects, and fled to Geneva and Calvin in
in 1551, being at the time only thirty-five years of age. Few biographies of
the period are more interesting ; and few it may be added exhibit more pain-
fully the mischievous effects of a perverted view of religious duty. Cf. Berti,
p. 98, note 2. C. Cantu, 01% Eretici d 1 Italia, ii. p. 11. Heraog, Seal EncyUopadie,
vol. ii., voce Caraccicli.

Giordano Bruno. 269

of Geneva. At the end of that period, finding the alternative of
starvation or an open profession of Calvinism staring him in the face,
he took his leave, quietly, and started for Lyons. Such was the first
of several experiences of Protestant liberty which induced him to
regard the Reformation as a deformation. At Lyons Bruno stayed
only ten or twelve days. He next turned his steps to Toulouse.
Professor Berti supposes that Bruno might here have come in contact
with Sanchez, who settled in Toulouse, according to my calculations,
in the very year of Bruno's arrival thither. Neither of the two
skeptics seem to have mentioned the other ; though they had not a
few opinions in common as well as a large fund of general sympathy
for intellectual and spiritual freedom. Here Bruno applied for the
place of Ordinary Reader of Philosophy in the university. But in
order to obtain it he was compelled to undergo an examination for a
Doctor's degree. He did so; and, vanquishing his competitors re-
ceived the appointment ; thus becoming by dint of superior abilities
and erudition a professor in the second university of France, where,
as Professor Berti remarks, he was quite unknown.

Bruno began lecturing on the De Anima of Aristotle ; a subject
which afforded free play for the particular bent of his studies,
and was probably employed for inculcating indirectly some of the
principles of his Pantheistic Idealism. The topic was further
suitable on account of its popularity. We have seen l how the
Immortality of the Soul was the great theme of controversy in the
preceding century. Though the interest it then excited had now
begun to wane it was still a prominent subject of debate in Italian
and French seats of learning.

For the next two years Bruno continued to lecture at Toulouse.
During this time he wrote several works, one on the the soul — the
subject of his early lectures — which is lost Probably its contents
are, as Professor Berti surmises, to be found in the third part of his
treatise De umbris idearum. He also wrote the first of his many
works on the mystical philosophy of Raymond Lulli, which is also
lost. Besides his literary and professorial work he held public
disputations, after the fashion of the time, on certain propositions or
theses, which he announced from time to time as being prepared to
defend against all comers. But notwithstanding the publicity of
his teachings it does not appear that Bruno was subjected to harsh
treatment at Toulouse. It is true that he classes this city with
Oxford and Paris as places where he had to encounter the fury of
scholasticism, 9 and Bartholmess, with his paucity of materials, infers

1 See Chapter on Pomponaszi, above, p. 197, and compare Berti, Vtta % p. 114.
* * Scholasticum hirorem.' Op. Lat., p. 624.

270 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

from these words that Bruno was compelled to make a hasty flight
from Toulouse to escape the fate of Vanini and a few more martyrs
of free-thought, who had fallen, or were destined to fall, victims to its
notorious intolerance. 1 But the enmity he thus mentions, as haying
stirred among schoolmen and Peripatetics, was probably confined to a
small circle, for we now know that Bruno's stay in Toulouse extended
to two years and six months (not a few months only, as Bartholmess
supposed) ; and that he departed thence of his own free will. More-
over on his removal to Paris in 1579, the fame he had acquired by
his Toulouse teachings, and the letters of recommendation he took
with him from that seat of learning, enabled him to introduce himself
to the city and university of Paris under very favourable auspices ;
for he tells us that his Doctor's degree, and his appointment as
Ordinary Lecturer in the former university, gave him the privilege
of teaching publicly in the university of the capital. 2

For the first year after his arrival at Paris Bruno took no part in
piiblic teaching ; being probably deterred by the plague which then
ravaged the city. Several of his books were however written about
this time; and perhaps formed the occupation of that leisure interval.
But Bruno was not a mere student philosopher. The life of the
recluse thinker was irksome to him. He craved the open arena of
free teaching and discussion — interchange of thought with the world's
foremost thinkers. This constituted in his case, as in that of Lessing,
the very oxygen of his intellectual being. He accordingly began
teaching on his own private account in the Sorbonne, in order, as he
says, to bring himself to notice. ' Bruno was/ says Professor Berti, 3
' the genuine type, the true ideal of the free professor of those times.
In Toulouse, Paris, London, Oxford, Wittenberg, Prague, Zurich,
Frankfort, he mounted the professor's rostrum, and lectured, without
asking the protection or favour of any one. He goes from one
university to the next, he opens one school against another ; and when
he encounters an obstacle, as he does at Marburg, he scornfully
turns his steps in another direction. . . . Happily,' continues
the Professor, ' the university in those days was not as yet guarded,
confined, the fief of a privileged few. Bruno and others like him
could enter it freely, could challenge its professors to single combat,
and could lecture and dispute before scholars assembled from every

1 Cf. the next chapter on Vanini, and on Sanchez see the Skeptics of the
French Renaissance.

8 It is unfortunate that in his picturesque chapter on Bruno, Mr. G. H.
Lewes still adheres mainly to the narrative of Bartholomess. Hence his
account of Bruno is sorely deficient in chronological exactness. See Hist, of
Philosophy, Edition iii., vol. ii. p. 91. * Vita, p. 121.

Giordano Bruno. 271

m

part of Europe. Thus were developed, by intellectual gymnastics
and emulation, those strong and laborious teachers of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, to whom modern nations are indebted for
their literary and scientific advancement.

Lecturing at the Sorbonne, it was natural that Bruno should select
a theological subject. He chose the thirty divine attributes contained
in the first part of the Summa of Aquinas. This theme allowed
considerable scope for the discussion of a semi-Pantheistic theology,
of which no doubt Bruno availed himself ; nor is this, as we already
know, the only instance in which the wide intellectual success, the
combined originality and profundity of the angel of schools found
a sympathetic appreciation at the hands of philosophic Free-thinkers.
His lectures, or it may have been notes of them, Bruno subsequently
published under the title of Dei Predicamenti di Dio. By means
of these and similar public teachings, Bruno's fame extended to the
court of Henry III., where Italians were at that time in especial
favour. The king is said to have expressed a wish to know Bruno ;
and, having made his acquaintance, consulted him on a subject of a
Memoria Technica, which he professed to teach on the principles of
Lulli's philosophy. As a token of the royal favour, Bruno was offered
an Ordinary Lectureship in the university of Paris, which he refused
on the ground of the obligation it entailed of attending mass. Some
writers have thought that Bruno's refusal on this ground must have
exposed him to the hazard of martyrdom ; but in the comparatively
peaceful circumstances of France and Paris in 1580-81, he ran no
present risk of coming in contact with the fearful alternative, l Le
Messe ou la Mart. 9 When he was subsequently offered a chair as
extraordinary reader in philosophy, which was free from this
obligation, Bruno accepted it. In return for the king's favour he
dedicated to him his treatise, De umbris idearum, which contains
the germs of his system, he also published' a satire, Cantu Circeo,
and a book written to elucidate and simplify Lulli's Art, but which
a modern reader must admit stands itself in need both of elucidation
and simplification. Bruno's successful lectures, court patronage, and
influential society, made his first residence in Paris an agreeable
episode in his career, and it was gratefully remembered by him in
after life.

At the end of 1583 Bruno came to England. He brought with
him letters of introduction from Henry III. to the French ambassador
at the court of Elizabeth. This was Castelnuovo di Mauvissiere, an

1 Berti, p. 128.

* ( De compendiosa architectura et complements Artis Lulli.'

272 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

enlightened, tolerant, and generous man. He welcomed Bruno with
great cordiality, and made him reside as a private gentleman in his
own house. This was by far the happiest period in Bruno's life.
He now enjoyed for the first time the Uberias philosophandi* — a
formula he is said to have originated — while, of the thing so defined,
he certainly is, in Europe, one of the earliest and freest exponents.
He could write and publish his philosophical works without let or
hindrance. Enjoying the personal friendship of Castelnuovo, living
on terms of affectionate intimacy with his family, preserving withal
so much of his old independence that he was not even expected to
attend mass, though the ambassador and his household were ex-
tremely punctilious in their devotional duties, Bruno had most of
his time at his own command, and was able to pursue his studies
without being harassed by the fear of poverty or the necessity of
earning his bread. It is no marvel, says Professor Berti, if he called
Castelnuovo his defence, his only refuge ; and that in gratitude for
the manifold favours of being housed, nourished, defended, freed,
preserved in safety, he dedicated to him four of his writings, in order
to proclaim to the world that to his patron alone is due, ' that the
new-born philosophy of the Nolan muse is not dead amidst its
swaddling-clothes.' As it was, * the offspring of the Nolan muse'
during this period was both numerous and robust, and attained an
early and flourishing maturity. Some of Bruno's chief works were
written and published while enjoying the dignified leisure of
Castelnuovo's hospitality. 2 Nor was Bruno's undoubted genius for
verbal discussion allowed to remain idle. The house of the French
ambassador was the resort of a select few of the best contemporary
representatives of English culture. There Bruno met Sir Philip
Sidney, Sir Fulke Greville, 'Dyer, Harvey, the poet Spenser, Temple
the translator of Ramus's Dialectic, and others who took an interest
in literature and philosophy. In this congenial society the opinions

1 ( Libertas philosophical Bruno, de Lampade combinatoria. Op. Lat., Ed.
GfrOrer, p. 624. " La liberta filosofioa, questa frase che egli adopera forae per il
primo tra gli scrittori a lui coevi, significava un concetto quanto novo per il
tempo tanto f amigliare e commune per il Bruno, cioe, che la filosofia, la sciemea
non era sindacabile." — Berti, p. 211. Bartholmess, i. p. 158, note 2.

1 They are thus enumerated by Berti, p. 185 : —

1. Explioata triginta sigillorum, etc, dedicated to Castelnuovo.

2. La Cena delle Ceneri „ „ 1584.
8. De la Causa, principio et uno „ „ 1584.

4. De I' Infinite, universo e mondi „ „ 1584.

5. Spaccio de la Bestia trionfante, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, 1584.

6. Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, 1585.

7. De Gli eroici f urori, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, 1585.

Giordano Bruno. 273

and theories of the foremost spirits of the age, continental as well
as English, were debated with freedom, sympathy, and intelligence.
Bruno's work, the Cena delle Ceneri, is an offspring of these philo-
sophical reunions — a reminiscence of ancient symposia ; ' and conveys
a pleasing impression of the social urbanity, the varied learning, the
profound thought and philosophical acuteness which characterized
them. The religious questions which were then agitating Europe
come in for their share of attention ; and are debated with marvellous
.freedom from the preposessions of Romanism, on the one hand, and
Protestantism on the other, Professor Berti observes that these
meetings of free-thinkers with their disputations on religion, under
his own roof, afford a striking proof of the tolerance of Castelnuovo,
who, judging from his opinion of the colloquy of Passy, disliked
religious controversy, for the reason that religion ' Ne se peut bien
entendre que par la foy et par humilite.' * As a distinguished guest
of the French ambassador, and also as a thinker of considerable
reputation, Bruno was presented to Queen Elizabeth ; who, as usual
with learned foreigners, seems to have left a favourable impression
on him. 3 The eulogistic terms in which he was accustomed to speak
of the English queen, and other heretic princes, formed one item in
the charges which the Inquisition proffered against him.

But there is one episode in Bruno's English life whioh we must
not pass over; and that is his brief connexion with Oxford. I n ~\
addition to his craving for intellectual notoriety, he was possessed J
of the conviction that Providence destined him to be one of those /
* mercurial spirits ' occasionally sent from heaven to enlighten mankind. 4 .
Hence he was always desirous of some prominent position as a public \
teacher. This was probably the feeling that induced him to address '
the authorities of the University of Oxford, which he did in a letter
to the Vice-Chancellor, prefixed to the work he first published after
his arrival in this country — Spiegazione di trenta sigilli. This

1 Barth., i. p. 181, compares the contemporary and more celebrated club of
the ' Mermaid Tavern.'

1 Berti, p. 1G0, note 8,

8 He calls her * grande Anfitrite, Diana, nnme della Terra.' Comp. what
Berti truly calls the excessive eulogies of Elizabeth in Op. Ital., i, pp. 144 and
280.

4 De Umbris Idearum, p. 18. 'Non cessat providentia Deorum (dixerunt
JEgyptii saoerdotes) statutis quibusdam temporibus mittere horn in i bus Mer-
curio* quotdam etiamsi eosdem minime vel male receptum iri proecognoscant.'
That Bruno considered himself one of these ( mercurial spirits ' is clear from
other passages in his works. Mocenigo, in his denunciation, affirmed that
Bruno had confessed to him that he wished to make himself the author of a
new sect, under the name of the New Philosophy. Cf. Berti, p. 188, note.

VOL. I. T

2 74 ^k Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

letter is a very curious production. 1 Indeed, its vainglorious language
is only explicable on the writer's profound conviction of his heaven-
inspired philosophical mission. Either this epistle, or the credentials
Bruno brought with him from Paris, or else his general fame as a
philosopher, procured for him the coveted permission to lecture in the
university. Accordingly, he lectured on the 'immortality of the

tsoul ; ' and on ' the five-fold sphere ; ' * in other words, on subjects
allied to his theological metaphysics and his Copernican astronomy.
It is needless to state that the Oxford of 1583 did not evince very
warm sympathies with a theology so far removed both from Romanist
and Anglican creeds, nor with a physical science not to be found in
Aristotle. Bruno, who was so well acquainted with continental
universities, estimates the scientific and philosophical acquirements
of Oxford at an extremely low rate. He calls it ' una costellazione
di pedantesca ostinatissima ignoranza e presunzione mista con una
rustica incivilita, che farebbe prevaricar la pazienza di Giobbe.' s
Bruno clearly was far from possessing the patience of Job ; and a
short experience enabled him to perceive the futility of continuing
to pay unwelcome addresses to the ( widow of sound learning/ 4 as he
wittily nicknamed our great university.

Bruno was at Oxford during the festivities and intellectual tourna-
ments with which the university celebrated the arrival of the Polish
Prince Alasco, in 1583. He took a public part in the contests, as the
defender of the Copernican system, against the Ptolemaic ; and as the
implacable foe of the Peripateticism then rampant at Oxford. Fifteen
times, Bruno assures us, he closed the mouth of the unfortunate
Doctor whom the university had selected as the Goliath of their
Philistinism, 6 to maintain the dogmas of the immobility of the earth
and the moveabieness of the heavens. The dispute grew warm.
Bruno complains of the incivility and discourtesy of ( the Pig* chosen
to oppose him ; and lauds the patience and humanity with which he

1 See it quoted by Berti, p. 167, note 1. It is translated, but not very
correctly, by Bartholmess, i. p. 122, note 1, e.g. describing his * general
philanthropy/ Bruno says, ' Qui non magis Italum quam Britannum, marem
quain foeminam, mitratum quam coronatum, togatum quam armatum cucul-
latum hominem quam sine cuculla virum . . . diligit,' which Bartholmess
renders, ( qui aime (Tune ggale affection Italiens et Anglais, meres et jeunes
epouses!' etc.

9 Opera Ital., i. 179. Ed. Wagner.

» Op. Ital., i. 179.

4 ( Vedova de le buone lettere, per quanto appartiene a la professione di
filosofia e reali matematiche ne le quali mentre sono tutti ciechi, vengono
questi asini, e ne si vendono per oculati,' etc., etc. Op. Ital., i. p. 123.

5 This was a certain Dr. Lyson, as appears from Wood's Antiq. Oxon.

Giordano Bruno. 275

repelled his swinish attacks, as a proof of his Neapolitan origin, and
his nurture under a brighter sky. It is of course too much to expect
of the controversialist of the time, even when, like Bruno, he is a \
native of the genial south, that he should exercise the same courtesy J
in recounting, as in performing his deeds of intellectual prowess.

The biographer of Bruno, who knows what disasters are still in
store for him, feels a natural repugnance at quitting this peaceful
and happy period of his life. Professor Berti speculates on what
would have been Bruno's future intellectual development had he
continued to live in England. His general lot would have been very
different; he would have escaped at least the fate which ultimately
befel him; 1 though his own restlessness would in all likelihood have
exposed him to difficulties. The lesson of toleration was as yet very I
imperfectly acquired in this country ; and Bruno's philosophy, which
he must needs have taught with his usual courage and unreserve,
was both too opposed to generally received forms of Christianity, and
too alien from the practical genius of Englishmen, to be acceptable
to more than the narrow circles of thinkers who had imbibed the
broader culture of continental, and especially Italian universities.
With all the felicitous circumstances of his situation as an esteemed
inmate of Castelnuovo's house, there were intermingled some few
drawbacks to his happiness. The climate of England was such a
wretched contrast to that of his beloved Naples ; the coarse, almost
brutal manners of Englishmen, their insular arrogance and ignorance,
their insuperable dislike of foreigners, differed so completely from
the refinement and gentle courtesy of his own countrymen, that
Bruno's complete acclimatization would have been a protracted, if not
impossible process. England in the sixteenth century was, we must
remember, far behind Italy in knowledge and culture as well as
in other elements of civilization. The combined pedantry and ignor-
ance that Bruno found in Oxford, and which he castigated so vigor-
ously in La Cena de la Ceneri, was only the academic maturity of
defects which characterized the average English gentleman. Under
all the circumstances of the case I am of opinion that Bruno was
un suited by birth, temperament and intellect to lead a genuinely
happy life in our cold, gloomy, and dull island. Some foretaste of
the difficulties continued residence here would have occasioned, was
afforded by the outcry which assailed him on account of his free
criticism of Oxford ignorance, and English ill-manners, in the Cena de

1 Hal lam, who also speculates on the same contingency, observes : ' It had
been well for Bruno if he had kept himself under the protection of Diana
(Queen Elizabeth). The " chaste beams of that watery moon" were less
scorching than the fires of the Inquisition.' Literature of Europe, ii. p. 191.

276 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

la Ceneri. His remarks gave such umbrage, that Bruno found it
expedient to give a modified version of his criticism in his next
published work, the De la Causa principio et uno. l

Towards the close of 1585 Bruno returned to Paris in the suite of
Castelnuovo. Soon after his arrival he resumed his occupation of
lecturing and disputing in the Sorbonne. This his Doctor's degree
from Toulouse, as well as his former position as Extraordinary Reader
of Philosophy, enabled him to do without requiring the permission
of the authorities. He selected, to defend his theses, an enthusiastic
disciple called Hennequin, who afterwards edited and published his
defence. Bruno's contests during this second sojourn in Paris were
with the Peripatetics, and seem to have excited both attention and
some degree of animosity. Nevertheless, it was not on account of
this excitement that he left the French capital in the early part of
1586; but rather because of the civil discords which were then
agitating France, and in accordance with a determination he had
some time previously expressed of visiting other continental uni-
versities. This resolution he carried into effect by visiting Marburg,
where he arrived in July, 1586. One of his first acts at Marburg
was the inscription of his name among the scholars of the university
as * Jordanus Nolanus Neapolitans, Theologies Doctor Romanensis.'
Having thus asserted his membership, he demanded of the Rector
permission to lecture publicly. This that functionary, after con-
sultation with the faculty of philosophy, thought proper to refuse
' for grave reasons.' Bruno was so indignant at this treatment — so
different from all his prior experience of university usages — that he
went to the Rector's house and rated him soundly for acting in
contravention to the rights of nations, the customs of all the German
universities, and all human studies. Bruno's biographers have been
puzzled to discover the ( grave reasons ' which induced the authorities
of Marburg to act as they did. Professor Berti is probably right
in supposing that their Protestant sensitiveness took alarm at the
designation, Doctor in Roman Theology, which he appended to his
name; though that was the sole title by which he could claim to
lecture in any university in Europe.

Bruno immediately left Marburg, and after a few days' stay at
Mayence, arrived at Wittenberg. Here he was received with courtesy.
He was immediately allowed to lecture, without any inquiry into his
religious or philosophical creed, and without the production of any
letters of recommendation which he had received from different princes
and universities.* His lecture-room was speedily crowded, and now,

1 Op. Ital., i. Comp. Berti, p. 178.

8 In a valedictory oration which Bruno addressed to the university autho-

Giordano Bruno. 277

before a Lutheran audience, Bruno set forth his sublime speculations
on the Infinite just as he had before the Romanists of Toulon and
Paris, and the Anglicans of Oxford. The first year of his Wittenberg
residence he devoted to these metaphysical speculations, which also
gave rise to two treatises on Lulli's system. During the second year,
1588, he lectured on Aristotle's Organon 1 probably employing it as a
basis for inculcating Lulli's logic. Bruno stayed at Wittenberg two
years, and would probably have stayed longer, but a change on the
throne of Saxony, by which Christian I. became Elector in name, and
Casimir, his relative, a jealous Calvinist, Elector in reality, threatened
to give Calvinists a superiority over Lutherans in the University of
Wittenberg. His Genevan experiences had taught Bruno the
peculiarly harsh and bitter nature of Caivinistic intolerance. He
therefore took his leave of Wittenberg and the Lutheran friends he
had formed there, with much regret on both sides. So cordial had
been his relations with the tolerant Lutheranism which, under
Melanohthon's benign influence, at that time reigned in Wittenberg,
that the rumour was circulated that he had joined the Lutheran
Church. He had no doubt manifested his appreciation of the anti-
papal traditions of Wittenberg, and concurred in the Lutheran
definition of the Pope as Antichrist ; but it does not appear, as was
afterwards alleged, that he wrote a panegyric of Satan as a praise-
worthy contrast to the Vicar of Christ.

From Wittenberg Bruno went to Prague. On his arrival here he
published two works which he dedicated to the Spanish ambassador
at the court of Rudolf II. This monarch, the patron of Kepler and
Tycho Brahe — was a devout believer in occult science. He spent his
days in searching for the philosopher's stone, and his nights in
surveying the stars for astrological purposes. Bruno might have
expected to find him a patron of the Luilian Cabbala, to which he
was himself becoming more and more addicted. The works he had
dedicated to the Spanish ambassador having failed of their purpose,
i.e. to bring him into notice, Bruno determined to address the
Emperor himself. For this purpose he composed a work with the
striking title, One Hundred and Sixty Articles against the Mathe-
maticians and Philosophers of the Present Time. To this he pre-
fixed a dedication, in which he claims the utmost liberty of judgment
in the liberal sciences, affirming that in these matters he does not

rities of Wittenberg, he thus recounts their frank and generous reception of
him : ' Non nasum introsistis, non sannas exacuistis, bucca non sunt inflate
pulpita non strepuerunt, in me non est scholasticus furor (as at Toulouse)
incitatus . . . Interim et philosophicam libertatem illibatam conservatis.'
Op. Lat., p 624. Compare Bartholmess, i. 155.

278 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

allow the authority of parents, of masters, of traditions or of customs.
In philosophy, truth must be beheld with one's own eyes, not with
those of another. He avows that his independence and devotion to
truth have cost him much ; nevertheless he has come victoriously out
of every struggle, sustained by a conviction of truth, and guided by
a divine and superior light. 1 The Emperor accepted the book, and
sent 300 thalers, as a present, to Bruno. The money was most
acceptable, for his circumstances were now in a very straitened
condition. But though he was thus enabled to subsist and pay his
way for the time, his position at Prague was unsatisfactory. He
lacked what had become to him the essential of a happy existence —
public lectures and disputings, the encouragement and excitement
produced by the applause of enthusiastic pupils. Again Bruno
moved and this time to Helmstadt; where under the patronage of
the House of Brunswick, the new university founded in 1576 was
rising into fame. Bartholmess and other biographers of Bruno
have asserted that he left Prague with letters of recommendation to
the court of Brunswick, which obtained for him the education of
the young Duke Henry Julius ; but neither in his known works nor
in the Venice documents is there anything to support this assertion.
Equally devoid of -foundation is another report concerning Bruno's
Helmstadt life, viz. that he was chosen by the university to deliver
an oration at the funeral of the reigning Duke. That he read an
oration on the occasion is certain ; but it was not at the solicitation
of the university, or of any portion of it. It was merely the exercise
he, as usual, set himself on arriving at a new university, to elicit
public attention. In this he succeeded. The young Duke read
Bruno's speech ; and was so pleased with it that he bestowed on him
great commendations, as well as the more tangible recognition of a
sum of money. Bruno might, after such an auspicious beginning,
have expected a long and peaceful career in the Helmstadt University ;
but a dispute with Boetius, the superintendent of the Evangelical
Church, led to his excommunication by that functionary. Bruno
appealed against the judgment ; but probably mistrusting the issue
of the appeal against such a potentate, he left Helmstadt quietly,
and in April, 1590, we find him at Frankfort, whence he issued
(without naming them) a decree of f ulmination against the Brunswick
theologians.

At Frankfort Bruno became acquainted with the celebrated pub-
lishers Wechel, worthy successors of the Aldii and Stephens of a
preceding age. Their house was the resort of all the learning and
culture which came to Frankfort. These estimable persons received

1 Berti, p. 228.

Giordano Bruno. 279

Bruno with great cordiality, and procured him lodgings in a Car-
melite convent at their own expense. Frankfort was then celebrated
for its fairs, which took place twice a year, and drew together
merchants and traders from every country in Europe. Among the
rest who visited it on these occasions were learned men who came to
inspect the wares of its numerous book-shops, and to exchange
literary and philosophical news. At one or other of the principal
book marts these men, representatives of most of the universities in
Europe, were in the habit of congregating and discussing different
learned subjects, as mathematics, astronomy, theology and philosophy.
The book-shops thus subserved the ends which are now attained by
literary clubs and newspapers, and the meetings of learned societies.
They were intellectual stock-exchanges, centres for the intercommuni-
cation and diffusion of different literary products. These reunions
we may well suppose were admirably suited to our skeptic's taste ;
and he took part in them with his usual enthusiasm.

Among those who came to the spring fair of 1591 were two Venetian
booksellers, Giotto and Britanno, the former of whom kept a well-
known book-store in Venioe at the sign of the Minerva. They took
lodgings near the Carmelite monastery, where Bruno had taken up
his quarters. They fell in with him on several occasions, and the
discourse, as was inevitable, turned on Bruno's varied contributions
to philosophical literature, and his opinions. On their return to
Venice they took with them one of Bruno's works just published in
Frankfort, probably (so Professor Berti thinks) the work De Monade
Numero et Figura. This work Ciotto showed to a young Venetian
of noble family, but of superstitious and weak intellect, who used to
frequent his shop. It would appear that this man had dabbled in
some branch of the sciences known as occult ; and he inferred from
Bruno's book that he had in reserve a large amount of esoteric lore,
which the work only hinted at. Bruno thus seemed to be a teacher
precisely adapted for himself. He prevailed on his friend Ciotto to
forward a letter, begging him to come to Venice to instruct him.
He himself followed up Ciotto's espistle by a missive of his own,
addressed directly to Bruno, and requesting him to come to him with
all convenient speed.

Fifteen years' wandering over Europe had only intensified the love ]
that Bruno always cherished for Italy. He regarded the invitation
of Mocenigo as a providential call homewards to the sunny skies, the
genial climate! the gentler and more cultured people of his native
land. It is possible, though his parents were both dead, that some
friend or relative may have still been living in the well-remembered
neighbourhood of Mount Cicala, whence he had wandered into a

280 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

world which, to his passionate longing after freedom, had been little
else than Egyptian bondage, or the narrow confines of a gaol cell.
For a moment was forgotten, or perhaps unseen, like a viper lurking
behind flowers, the authority of the Inquisition, the racks and
pinions of the Holy Office, the processes for heresy which so many
years before had driven him from his home, the martyrdoms for
free-thought, of which not a few must have been within his own
personal knowledge. He only saw the fascinating aspects of his
early and only love. He therefore immediately closed with Mocenigo's
offer. Not only so, but he departed from Frankfort in such haste
that he left uncorrected the last few pages of a book which the
brothers Wechel were publishing for him.

Bruno arrived at Venice in 1592, and placed himself at the dis-
posal of his new patron and pupil. The connexion was ill-omened
in every respect. Mocenigo was the complete antipodes of his master
in mental qualities, education and disposition; indeed, he was a
(^ gloomy, superstitious, mistrustful fanatic. It is difficult at first sight
to conceive what Bruno could find to teach such an unpromising
pupil. But in the Venetian documents he says that what Mocenigo
wished to learn, and what he therefore imparted, consisted of his
Lullian Cabbala, together with his method of artificial memory. But
whatever the tuition, it would seem that it was not at first of a
nature calculated to arouse Mocenigo's extreme orthodox sensitive-
ness. The intercourse of master and pupil assumed such en amicable
character, that Bruno was prevailed upon to take up his abode in
Mocenigo's house. Meanwhile he followed his usual avocations ; for
in addition to his stipulated converse with his pupil, he was engaged
in superintending the publication of new works; while he spent
much of his leisure in the different bookshops, especially in that of
Ciotto, and held controversies with those who frequented these
literary lounges. Nor were these the only opportunities which Bruno
enjoyed for free discussion, and of which he availed himself with a
readiness which under the circumstances betrays a want of ordinary
caution. In Venice, as in other Italian towns, the spirit of the
Renaissance, and the momentous and interesting questions it started,
gave rise to the formation of private debating clubs, in which the
varied topics then agitating the mind of Europe, were discussed
with more or less freedom and completeness. There were two
resorts of this kind in Venice, — one, in the house of an opulent
merchant, Secchini, the other in that of Morosini, a man of culture
and learning, who occupied the important post of chief historiographer
of Venice. The reunions at Secchini's occupied themselves chiefly
with scientific discoveries, while those at Morosini's discussed

Giordano Bruno. 281

questions of literature and philosophy. To Morosini's seances Bruno
was introduced by Ciotto soon after his arrival, and was received
with great cordiality. The part which Bruno took in the discussions
there was afterwards borne witness to before the Venetian inquisitors
by Morosini himself, as having been of a literary and philosophical
character, and having nothing to do with religion, whence we may note!
that the complete severance between philosophy and theology, which
was an axiom with the free-thinkers of the Renaissance, was an
admitted principle with these private discussion clubs; nay, it
probably constituted their chief raison d'etre.

During this time Bruno paid occasional visits to the neighbouring
university of Padua, and gave private lectures to some German
students. The longest stay he made there did not however exceed
two months, so that those writers are in error who affirm that he
resided in Padua for some time, and became acquainted with Galileo.
The chronology of Bruno's life, as finally determined by the Venetian
documents, proves that he could have had no personal acquaintance
with Galileo, who did not commence lecturing at Padua until some
months after his long incarceration had begun. The only traceable
point of contact between the two men consists in the fact that the
extradition decree which surrendered Bruno to the Inquisition at
Rome was signed by the same official who invited Galileo to lecture
at Padua. Between his occupations at Venice and occasional visits to
Padua, Bruno passed some seven or eight months. All the while the
manifold and radical dissimilarities between himself and Mocenigo
were growing to an open rupture. Portions of the master's teaching
had aroused the suspicion of the mistrustful and narrow-minded pupil,
who perhaps took ( omne ignotum pro hgeretico.' He confided his
suspicions to his confessor; and received in return the advice to
ascertain Bruno's errors more fully, and then to denounce him to the
Inquisition. From this time Mocenigo acted the degrading part of
a spy on his poor unsuspicious tutor; whom he had invited from
Frankfort, into whose confidence he had wound himself, and who
by his own desire was the inmate of his house and the companion of
his leisure hours. He seems to have used the knowledge he had
acquired of the susceptible points of Bruno's enthusiastic temperament
to draw him out, as De Francon did Vanini, and make him commit
himself. Ultimately, having procured sufficient materials for the
accusation, he determined to denounce his guest to the Inquisition ;
impelled thereto, as he himself says, by the advice of his confessor,
and the bidding of his conscience. The denunciation was formally
made by a letter dated the 23rd of May.

Meanwhile Bruno discovered, by the altered demeanour of his

282 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

pupil, and by questions proposed with the obvious purpose of con-
victing him of heresy, the secret conspiracy that was being formed
against him. Accordingly he determined to return to Frankfort.
He sent all his MSS. already completed to the press, put his other
affairs in order, and attempted, not very wisely it may be said, to
take leave of his treacherous pupil on the 21st of May. Mocenigo,
however, would not part with him. First with persuasions, then
with threats, he endeavoured to persuade Bruno to remain. Finding
his efforts ineffectual, he resolved to anticipate the action of the
Inquisition, and even his own denunciation, by making him a prisoner.
This he effected in a way which proves his own transformation, not
an uncommon one, from the superstitious weakling to the blood-
thirsty zealot. Towards midnight of Friday, the 22nd of May, he
entered the bedchamber where Bruno was asleep, accompanied by
his servant and five or six gondoliers of the neighbourhood, and on
the pretext of wishing to converse with him conducted him to a
garret, and then locked him in. The next day Mocenigo forwarded
his denunciation to the Inquisitors x who immediately sent an officer
to his house. He took formal possession of the prisoner, brought him
down from the garret, and locked him up in a warehouse on the
ground floor of the house, whence he was removed on the night of
Saturday, the 23rd of May, into the prison of the Inquisition. With
this ill-omened event ends the free life of our unhappy free-thinker.
Henceforth there remains for him a cruel imprisonment of eight long
years, terminating with the stake.

Bruno's trial before the Venetian Inquisitors began on the 26th of
May. The booksellers Giotto and Brutanno, who had known him
in Frankfort, were cited to bear evidence concerning him. Answer-
ing the interrogatories of his judges, Bruno explained the reason why
he had left Frankfort and come to Venice. He then proceeded to

A recount in order the chief events of his life. For several days he con-
tinued his narrative, and this autobiography, preserved in the Venetian

, documents, now constitutes the sole authority for most of his life.
Coming to his opinions, he laid stress on the doctrine of Twofold
Truth, then so generally recognized in Italy. He said that he~was a
Philosopher, not a Theologian; as such he claimed a freedom of

, inquiry and exposition to which he confessed a theologian would
have had no claim. This is the key-note of his defence, and he
repeatedly recurs to it. He admitted that indirectly his doctrine
might come into conflict with the Christian faith just as it might
with the teaching of Aristotle or Plato. He denied that he had ever

1 Documenti interno a Giordano Bruno. Borne, 1880. They are translated
in Miss Frith's History, pp. 262-265.

Giordano Bruno. 283

taught or written anything directly contrary to Christianity. He
then proceeded to expound his philosophical creed, without trying,
as Professor Berti well remarks, to minimize or hide its implication. k
He distinctly avowed that he believed in an universe infinite in ) .'
extent, and infinite also as consisting of innumerable worlds. He
maintained that these worlds, scattered through space, were like our
own. This universe, he believed, was governed by a general and
constant law, which he termed Providence, by means of which every-
thing lives, grows, moves, and attains its perfection. The Divine
Being possesses those principal attributes, power, wisdom, and good-
ness, in other words, mind, intellect, and love. 1 The first of these
is the source of general existence, the second is the cause of
particular or distinct existence, while the concord or harmony be-
tween these two is sustained by the third, or love. The word creation
expressed, he said, the dependence of the world on its first cause :
which is true whether we conceive it to be eternal, or created. He
freely admitted having doubted, in terms of the natural reason, the
Incarnation of the Word, called by philosophers the Intellect, or son
of the mind ; so also the Holy Spirit, or, according to theologians, the
third Person of the Trinity was by him regarded and defined as the
soul of the universe, in harmony with the doctrine expressed in/
VirgiPs verses : —

4 Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
Mens agitat molem,'

or in accordance with the passage of Solomon, ( Spiritus Domini
replevit orbem terrarum. ,si

The Inquisitors, probably puzzled at a scheme of theology, which,
preserving the terms of Christian orthodoxy, interpreted them in a
manner so novel, requested Bruno to repeat the outlines of his system.
He readily consented, using nearly the same terms. They suggested
that he had been accused of Arianism, to which he immediately
answered, that in conversation he had more than once avouched his
opinion that the doctrine of Arius was less pernicious than was com-
monly supposed. With equal readiness he replied to other allegations
respecting his relation to the Church ; maintaining that he held what
the Church taught, at the same time admitting that he was to blame
for not observing her rules more precisely ; and promised amendment
for the time to come. Being asked his opinion respecting miracles,
he answered that he had always believed the miracles of Christ were

1 Comp. Op. Ital., ii. 279.

1 Berti, Vita, p. 259. Comp., Book of Wisdom i. 7. Ilrev/ta KvpLw t€tMif*m

284 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

divine, true, real, and not pretended — consequently a secondary
testimony of His divinity, as its higher attestation is the Law of the
Gospels. He said he believed in the transubstantiation of the bread
and wine into the body and blood of Christ really and substantially ;
only he excused himself for not attending mass, assigning as an
impediment his excommunication. To the same impediment he
ascribed his neglect of confession for sixteen years ; although he held
that the Sacrament of Penance was ordained to purge our sins, and
he believed that every man dying in mortal sin would be damned.

Bruno's defence had already comprehended some of the counts
of Mocenigo's indictment; but more alarming ones still remained.
Among other strange allegations, Mocenigo said, Bruno had told
him that Jesus was a crafty personage, who might easily have fore-
seen His crucifixion, because He did crafty deeds to deceive the
people — that He was a magician and performed apparent miracles,
and so also did the apostles — that he himself had a mind to perform
as many, and even more than they did. That there was no punishment
for sin. That souls passed from one body into another, and are
begotten of corruption as all other animals. That our faith is full
of blasphemies — that the monks are apes. That St. Thomas and all
the doctors are ignoramuses ; and that he knew enough to put all the
theologians in the world to silence — that he intended to apply himself
to the Art of Divination so that all nations should run after him.
That the usages of the Church then were not those the apostles
employed. That the world could not last much longer as it was — that
a general reform was needful — that on this point he hoped great
things of the king of Navarre — that he was therefore anxious to
publish his works so as to bring himself into credit, because he was
sure of a place at the head of this reform, and would enjoy the
treasures of others — that he was fond of women, and thought it no
sin to obey the impulses of Nature.

Such an imbroglio of accusations, probable, specious and utterly
absurd could only have occurred to a mind like Mocenigo's, a com-
bination of intellectual imbecility and gloomy fanaticism. To all
these allegations Bruno gave a distinct and even vehement denial.
When e.g. he was confronted with the charge of calling Jesus crafty,
a doer of cunning works, his features assumed an expression of
deep pain, while he exclaimed he did not know how such a thing
could have been imputed to him. When he was further charged
with terming Christ a magician, and saying he was confident he
could do the same miracles that Christ and His apostles had done,
he lifted his hand to heaven, and in a passionate tone of voice said,
' What thing is this ? Who has invented this devilish accusation ?

Giordano Bruno. 285

Not only have I never uttered such things, but they have never even
crossed my imagination. God, what does this mean? I would
rather die than say such a thing.' He had himself given a list of
his works to the tribunal. Of these he fully admitted the author-
ship and accepted the responsibility. He gave reasons why some,
which were printed in London bore Venice or Paris on their title-
pages. He added — not the least mark of the bond fides and candour
which characterize Bruno in these trying scenes — that his writings
sufficiently demonstrated the measure of his excellence ; and that no
examination of them would discover that he had sought to bring the
Catholic religion into contempt.

Assuming the right of the tribunal to inquire into the religious
opinions of Bruno, it cannot be said that he was treated with undue
harshness by the Venetian Inquisition. Partly this was owing to the
independent status of the Holy Office in that city, 1 — a reflex of her
free institutions, which induced a more cautious and impartial treat-
ment of those who came before it. Partly it may be ascribed to the
subtle policy of pretended kindness and sympathy by which the un-
wary victims were further entangled in the toils the Inquisition spread
around them. On this occasion they seem to have treated Bruno's
assumed errors almost as if they were the inevitable aberrations of
one who starting from Philosophy had accidentally come into conflict
with Theology. They passed over those points in his confession in
which the divergency from orthodox belief was most clearly marked,
and dwelt on those on which he himself had expressed something
like a regret for such a seeming antagonism. This was precisely
the seductive method best adapted for Bruno's warm and enthusiastic
temperament. Easily hardened by opposition and abuse, he was
evidently amenable to the milder treatment of gentle remonstrance,
semi-acquiescent protests and persuasive reasoning. There is at
least no doubt that, like his contemporary Galileo, Bruno yielded to
the hypocritical blandishments of the Holy Office, and fell a victim
to its unholy cunning in discovering the more easily accessible or
assailable points in the characters of the unhappy beings brought
within its jurisdiction.

At the end of his second examination (May 30th) he expressed some
regret that in his works he had discoursed too much as a philosopher
and not sufficiently as a good Christian. On the 3rd of June he told
his judges that he ( detested and abhorred all the errors he had com-

1 Probably this did not differ greatly from what it was a century later in
1685, when the complete subordination of the Inquisition to the Deputies of
the Senate was observed, and described by Bishop Burnet in his work, Some
Letters from Switzerland and Italy, pp. 154-5.

286 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

mitted tip to the present time against the Catholic faith, all the
heresies he had held, and the doubts he had entertained respecting
the belief and dogmas of holy Church,' adding, ' I repent of having
done, held, said, believed, or doubted things not Catholic, and I
implore this sacred tribunal, in pity to my infirmity, to receive me into
the Church, providing for me remedies useful for my salvation, and
to have mercy upon me.' On the 30th of July, when brought before
the Venetian Inquisitors for the last time, he renewed his protestations
of penitence. * It may be,' he said to the judges, ' that in such a long
course of time I have erred and strayed from holy Church in other
ways than those I have already indicated, and am thereby entangled
in other censures; but so far as I know, and I have thought much
concerning the matter, I am quite unaware of it ; I have confessed
and do now readily confess my errors, and I put myself in the hands
of your most illustrious tribunal to receive a remedy on behalf of my
salvation. As to my sorrow for my misdeeds, I am unable to say how
great it is, nor can I adequately express my feelings.' Having uttered
these words he fell on his knees and continued : — ' I humbly ask par-
don of the Lord God, and of your most illustrious tribunal, for all the
errors I have committed, and am ready to endure what your prudence
may prescribe for me, and what you deem expedient for my soul. I
further entreat that you will immediately award me a punishment,
whose excess may be a public notification in due proportion to the
disgrace I may have brought on my sacred habit as a monk. And if
by the mercy of God, and of your most illustrious tribunal, my life
shall be granted, I promise to effect such a marked reformation of it,
as shall recompense for the scandal I have given.' 1

With the exception of distinct and repeated refusals to recant, and
the defiant utterance with which he met his final sentence, nearly
eight years after, these are Bruno's last authentic words. They
serve to show that the infamous methods of the Inquisition had suc-
ceeded in temporarily humbling one of the most daring spirits that
ever lived. How long the humiliation really lasted, by what means
it was effected, how far its form was suggested by the officers of the
Inquisition, or was the ex animo confession of Bruno himself, we shall
never know. Bemembering Bruno's undaunted spirit, I incline to the
belief that it was extorted from the poor wretch by a promise of
liberty, or by the tortures of the rack ; or it may have been induced
by the debilitating effect of a dreary imprisonment on such a freedom-
loving spirit, or by some other of the iniquitous means by which the
Holy Office induced false confessions when they were unable to obtain
true.

1 Bei t : , p. 264, and documents in the same work, pp. 884-5.

Giordano Bruno. 287

After this examination and recantation, Bruno was remitted to his
prison ; where for some inexplicable reason he remained for seven or
eight weeks, without, so far as is known, any further proceedings
being taken respecting him. At the end of that period the acts of
his process were forwarded to Rome ; and Cardinal Sanseverino, the
chief Inquisitor, wrote in September requiring Bruno's extradition.
The Venetian authorities seem to have treated the request with some
coldness, whether as evincing their customary jealousy of foreign
interference, or as seems to me not unlikely, Bruno found some
secret support, either among his judges or among persons able to
influence them. More than once Sanseverino, already thirsting for
the blood of our poor skeptic, had to repeat his demand. Special
grounds were urged for the request. Thus he was claimed as having
been a native of Naples, and because, in early years, he had been
implicated in other processes for heresy. It was also alleged that
Bruno was not an ordinary heretic ; he was a monk, nay, more, he was
an heresiarch monk ; it was precisely one of those extraordinary cases
which all the Inquisition tribunals had been accustomed to resign to
the jurisdiction of the chief office at Borne.

At last, as an act of personal favour to the Pope, whom it was
desirable to conciliate, it was deemed politic to yield to the request.
The Venetian authorities gave up Bruno ; who was forwarded to Borne
in January, 1593, 1 to meet the terrible doom which there awaited
him. Never did the malignant destiny which has so often dogged
the course of Free-thinkers provide a fate so atrocious and pitiless as
that which thus befel Bruno. Never was the irony of existence more
painfully exemplified. A martyr's death immediately following his
trial, and only some months after his first apprehension, would no
doubt have seemed a sufficiently bitter fate for an earnest truth-
seeker like Bruno ; but in itself death had for him, as we shall find,
no terrors. A few agonizing tortures at the stake, his ashes scattered
to the four winds, the consequent commingling of his being, physical
and mental, with the infinities of Nature and of God, which he re-
garded as the highest destiny of a sentient creature, would have
hardly caused him a momentary pang of regret. Something, as we
know, he was willing to concede to his foes for the sake of the re-
stricted liberty he had hitherto enjoyed. But, from the point of view
of his speculations and aspirations, it is evident that Bruno must have
had a surfeit of existence. He found it incompatible with the wild,

1 He was committed to the Inquisition prison at Borne, on the 27th of Feb-
ruary, 1598, as appears by a list of prisoners in the custody of the Holy Office,
drawn up on the 5th of April, 1599. 8ee Roman Documents, collected by Prof.
Berti, Copernico, etc., p. 224.

288 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

passionate freedom, the unrestrained liberty of thought, feeling, and
in some degree of action, on which alone he could bestow the name of
freedom. His whole life had been a warfare with restriction : in his
youth, moral and social ; in manhood, religious and philosophical. The
limits of earth itself were too narrow for his soaring intellect. Death
was but the deliverance from this enforced servitude — the commence-
ment of a new and wider experience, the dawning of a new era of
liberty. But incarceration for seven long years in dark and loathsome
dungeons, for a man whose every breath was an aspiration for free-
dom, whose every thought centred in her divine attributes, and whose
every act was part of a life-long struggle to possess her, imparts to
his lot a peculiar aspect of intense harshness and grim irony. No
doubt history presents us with other examples of still longer imprison-
ments; in which disciples of liberty have been immured in the Bastilles
of religious and political tyranny for nearly their whole lives. The
singular aggravation of Bruno's destiny lay in his overpowering
passion for freedom, and in his conviction of her unlimited character.
A prison may well be a cruel confinement to a man who is not im-
patient of the ordinary res traits of human existence, but must be
immeasurably more galling to one for whom earth itself is a mere
prison cell. To a bird of moderate flight and aspiration the bounds
of a cage will still seem intolerable, but to catch a skylark at the
very highest point of its soaring and tuneful flight, to entrap an eagle
in his lofty eyrie and immure it in a narrow, dark cage, would be a
punishment more cruel than death.

Over nearly the whole of that seven years' incarceration in the
Inquisition prison at Borne, a darkness and stillness more profound
than those of the grave are still suspended like a dreary funeral-pall.
What Bruno's trials were ; how often his limbs were stretched on the
rack, what other tortures, mental and physical, he was compelled to
endure, what cunning and ruthless efforts were made by his gaolers to
break down his indomitable spirit, to crush fully and Anally his
irrepressible yearnings after freedom, to transform the free-thinker
into the religious slave of a creed blasphemously called Christian, we
shall never know. The long duration of his imprisonment * seems to
imply that unusual pains were taken to convert a heresiarch whose
fame was European, or at least to present him in his last hours in the
penitent state of mind which would reflect so much lustre on his
holy tormentors and be such an edifying spectacle to the faithful.

1 Comp. the list of Inquisition prisoners above mentioned, from which it
appears that Bruno was in 1599 the only prisoner in charge of the Roman In-
quisition whose incarceration commenced in 1598. Cf. Berti, Copernico, etc., p.
227.

Giordano Bruno. 289

His Venice recantation, if genuine and unforced, is a proof that
Bruno was not insensible to some of the motive forces which the
Inquisition knew how to bring to bear upon heretics, and it is quite
conceivable that during his long incarceration at Borne his mind may
have wavered occasionally under the debilitating effects of torture
and privation on the one hand, or flattery and indulgence on the
other ; but one thing at least is certain, these fluctuations were only
temporary ; Bruno's general and final attitude of mind, as we shall
see when we come to the last scenes of his life, was one of heroic and
adamantine firmness.

Meanwhile we may take advantage of Bruno's imprisonment to
consider the general character of his philosophy, and the influence to
be allotted to Skepticism, both in its origin and in the shape it finally
appeared. But, as a necessary preliminary to this enquiry, it will be
as well to cast a brief glance at a few of his works, which have an
especial reference to our subject.

The earliest of these and one of the first of his extant works is his
comedy 72 Candtlajo. This drama marks the young skeptic at a
stage of his intellectual development when he has discerned the utter
vanity and falsehood of much that holds a high place in human con-
viction, or established usages. Its chief characters represent the
prevalent ignorance, pedantry, and superstition, with which he
waged war for the greater part of his life ; nor unhappily is this the
only particular in which it is a reflex of Bruno's age ; for the licence
of its language and manners reminds us only too faithfully of features
common to most of the literature of the Renaissance. But its main ^
interest centres in its unconscious portrayal of the mind of its author. /
Thus the wild chaotic disorder depicted in its pages, indicates a mind
in which principles and opinions of the most contradictory kind had
made a battle-field for their fiercest struggles ; while the tout ensemble
of the work, as well as the author's profession of faith in the introduc-
tion, shows that he had already learnt to reconcile the antimonies of
the universe, to neutralize its contradictions by means of juxtaposition
and subordination, to merge varying elements in an all-inclusive one-
ness, and by the fiery glow of his potent fancy to fuse the pettiness and
limitations of finite things in an unbounded and inscrutable infinite.
Thus he declares his philosophy in his dedication to La Signora Mor-
gana — perhaps a real personage elevated to a noble and picturesque
ideal, like the Beatrice of Dante or the Laura of Petrarca — ' Bear in N
mind, Lady, my Credo, which I need not teach you : Time takes away \
everything, and gives everything. All things change, nothing is J
annihilated. One thing only exists which is unchangeable. Only /
the One is eternal and abides eternally one, the same, and identical. /
vol. 1. u /

(

290 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

With this philosophy I enlarge my mind and magnify my intellect/ l
Of still more importance for our purpose is the celebrated work
Spaccio della Bestia Tidonfante. Few literary productions of the
sixteenth century have raised more controversy than this. By some
writers it has been held to be the original of the notorious but
mythical work De Tribus Impostor ibus. The Triumphant Beast to
be expelled, variously interpreted as Christianity or the Romish
Church, is in reality Dogma, peripatetic and scholastic as well as
religious. The aim of the work is mainly rationalistic and skeptical.
Bruno declares war to the knife against unveracities of every kind.
He would dethrone all authorities and powers which have usurped
wrongful dominion over men, and replace them by more genial and
humane duties.

The plan of this remarkable work is this : — Jupiter, the chief
of the Olympian court, is represented as an old man, who, having
exhausted the pleasures and dissipations of youth, is now willing
to reform. Having tired out the flesh he is desirous of living to
the Spirit. Like the royal Jewish libertine, he is inclined to pro-
nounce on all human delights and pursuits the verdict: 'Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity.' To stimulate his new-born zeal for reforma-
tion, he observes that mortals manifest a growing disinclination to
render to himself and the different members of his court the worship
they consider their due. One great obstacle to the execution of his
resolve is the actual state of heaven itself. The different constellations
and heavenly bodies are but records of the infamy, lust and ambition
of the inhabitants of Olympus, not unfrequently of himself, its
supreme lord. He resolves accordingly to sweep the heavens of
these unworthy deities and hated memorials, and establish in their
room those virtues and duties most conducive to the real welfare of
j humanity. So far, Bruno's conception is symbolical of the general
', movement we term the Renaissance, indeed it is signified in the very
word. Jupiter, the symbol of humanity as well as its creator and
\ ruler, was then undergoing a regenerating process. Older beliefs and
convictions, the prolific brood of hierarchical ambition and popular
ignorance were being, so far as reformers like Bruno had their way,
gradually swept from the firmament of the human intellect. No
longer did the ancient incense rise to heaven, no longer were sacri-
fices' offered on the old altars, no longer was worship rendered to the
tyrants and despots who had so long enslaved humanity. The
millennium of liberty was drawing nigh. The Beast of Dogma once
triumphant, but whose triumph had been purchased with the tears
and groans of men, was now to be expelled.

1 Op. Ital.y i. p. 5.

Giordano Bruno. 291

This reconstitution of the heavenly constellations 1 is made the
subject of these dialogues, and the mode in which it is effected
is related with a grotesque mixture of satire and humour which
sometimes borders on blasphemy, and with a redundancy of metaphor,
simile and allusion which is quite overwhelming. Jupiter proposes
his reforms in an animated speech. He does not scruple to reproach
his courtiers with their evil examples to men. * It is you,' he says,
' who have offered to mortals the sight and example of misconduct
extending to the most revolting vices. Yes, my friends, to perpetuate
our shame we have rendered our dwelling the monument of our
crimes. Instead of bestowing immortality on real virtues, on faith,
justice and temperance, we have honoured by our preference all errors
and villanies. We have consecrated scandals and sins both mortal
and venial. What, in short, are the signs of the Zodiac ? What are
the constellations, but striking evidences of our depravity and abase-
ment ? ' He suggests an immediate and thorough reform. * Truth/
he says, ' if we return to her service will break the chains with
which error has bound us. Let us then at once repent. Let us
cleanse the heavens of every object which may recall our transgres-
sions. Heaven is twofold. It is first within ourselves : let us
extirpate our ill tendencies. It is also outside us: let us replace
the images and statues which fill our apartments by other paintings
and figures of an opposite kind.' The proposal is received with
acclamations by the assembled gods and goddesses. A few days after
this assembly another is convoked for the purpose of carrying out the
resolutions of Olympus.

The actual substitution of new virtues for ancient and venerable \
falsities gives rise to much discussion of a free sort. The process /
takes some time, for it involves forty-eight changes. We need not
recapitulate what is in effect only a dry list of names. To give an
idea of the celestial reformation I will only say that for the Great
Bear is substituted truth; for the Dragon, prudence; for Cepheus,
wisdom ; for Pegasus, poetic inspiration ; for the Virgin, chastity ;

1 It is possible that Bruno may have been indebted for his idea of the refor-
mation of the heavens to the similar attempts of Bede and other theologians.
They also proposed to change the names and arrangements of the constella-
tions, e.g. they put St. Peter in the place of the Bam, St. Andrew instead of the
Bull, etc. In more recent calendars David, Solomon, the Magi, and other New
and Old Testament characters were placed in the heavens instead of the
former constellations. Gf. Flammarion, Astronomical Myths, p. 57. Bat while
their proposed reformation was ecclesiastical, Bruno's was philosophical and
ethical. Conceding however as obvious the ethical significance of the Spaccio,
the attempt to extort from it a formal system of moral teaching, such as that
made by Dr. Hartung, must be pronounced extremely rash.

292 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

for the Balance, equity, etc. The god Momus fittingly discharges the
part of the skeptic, who is apparently as indifferent to the qualities
of the new possessors as to those of the dispossessed provided only
that virtue has her inherent supremacy conceded. For instance, the
disposition of the Northern Crown is debated in the assembly. The
occasion serves to evoke Bruno's most scathing sarcasm on the
immorality of the Church. Minerva thinks that the Crown was in-
tended for some valiant prince, and that Jupiter should assign it to
the most deserving. 'Let it remain in heaven,' answers Jupiter,
1 until it can become the recompense of an invincible hero who, armed
with club and fire, may give to miserable Europe the peace it so
earnestly desires, and break the numberless heads of a monster worse
than that of Lernea, which diffuses through the veins of that un-
happy continent the fatal poison of a heresy possessing a thousand
diverse forms.

4 It is enough/ rejoins Momus, ' to merit the Crown that this hero
should put an find to the cowardly set of pedants who, without doing
any good, claim to be reverenced as pious people and pleasing to God ;
who say that to do good is right, and to do ill is wrong, but whatever
good one does, or ill one avoids, one is no worthier nor more agreeable
to God ; and that in order to become so nothing more is needed than
to believe and hope according to their formulae and their catechism.
Was there ever, ye gods ! a perversity more manifest ? '

* Certainly/ said Mercury, l he who is not aware of this does not
know what villainy means ; for this is the mother of all vice. Were
we to propound such a rule for men we should be hated worse than
death/

1 The worst of it is,' adds Momus, ' that they dishonour us by saying
this is the command of the gods ; nay, more, they stigmatize moral
effects and fruits by entitling them defects and vices. But while
they say no one works for them, and they labour for no one (for all
their work consists in vilifying the works of others) they neverthe-
less live by the works of those who have laboured for others as well
as for themselves, who have erected for others churches and chapels,
hospitals and alms' houses, colleges and universities. They are then,
plainly, thieves ; they have usurped the goods due to others, i.e. to
those who are really useful to the state because they give themselves
to speculative sciences, to virtuous manners, to the love of the Res
publica, to the maintenance of civil and social laws. Whereas if you
listen to the former, they are occupied only with things invisible,'
etc.

Thus vigorously does Bruno castigate the immoral orthodoxy of
Romanism, and the faith without works of Calvinism ; thus energetic-

Giordano Bruno. 293

j

ally does he protest against the dogmatic presumption which both at
Rome and Geneva was suffered to override the mos^ obvious and
elementary dictates of justice and humanity ; and proves that in his
earnest struggle for freedom he was by no means indifferent to the
claims of morality, or to the requirements of social and political # life.
As the common bane of these dogmatists is hatred of work and
practice, they are finally condemned, on the suggestion of Mercury, to
transmigrate into the bodies of asses.

This is but one episode in the long process of the reformation of
heaven. Another treats of the necessity of special providence as an
attribute of the Infinite. Bruno also insists on his utilitarian basis \
of religion. The gods, he says, do not ask to be loved or feared J
except as a benefit to humanity, and to prevent the vices which would
otherwise destroy it. Hence religions and churches should be dis-
tinguished neither by external symbols nor particular vestments, but/
by talents and virtues. Like Pomponazzi, Bruno makes no distinc-^
tion in kind between Christianity and other religions or divine laws J
He arraigns one and all at the bar of reason, which is the supreme
arbiter of the qualities and excellencies of each. At the same time
he is, as we shall find, quite alive to the merits which, on the basis
of reason, must be assigned to Christianity. It is impossible to
enumerate in this brief sketch the varied points discussed in this
remarkable work. The substantial identity of the principle of life
in all its many forms is distinctly proclaimed ; and the correlated
belief in transmigration is also affirmed. Occasionally, too, Bruno's
intense passion for freedom seems to assert itself in questionable
fotms, for he is inclined to pronounce in favour of polygamy as well
as to advocate some species of socialism. But we must remember, in
reading his works, that his impetuosity and impatience of restraint
of every kind, as well as the crude appeal common to him with other
free-thinkers of the time, to what appeared natural laws, lead him
occasionally to propound as tentative and hasty opinions, ideas which
he probably would not have entertained as practical propositions.

I may add that Momus, the representative in the Spaccio of the
skeptical rationalist, is finally commanded by Jupiter to be silent, and "\
to believe what he cannot comprehend.

The wild guerilla warfare with dogma, superstition and ignorance,
which forms the subject matter of the work now considered, is con-
tinued in Bruno's Cabala del Cavallo Pegasco, which maybe regarded
as its appendix. This is a treatise on the different species of ignor-
ance or Asinity, whether dogmatic and pedantic, or purely skeptical
and unenquiring. It thus resembles Erasmus's well-known Encomium
MorioB, and its particular object, like the De Docta Ignorant ia of

294 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissa?ice.

Cardinal de Cusa, is to stimulate men to free and enlightened enquiry.
Of all Bruno's writings this appears to me one of the most character-
istic. It has not the exuberant and far-reaching imagination, the
f wild ebullient recklessness of the Spaccio, but it possesses that
■ indefinable blending of philosophy and humour, of serious gravity
\ and sardonic mockery, of light pleasantry and bitter sarcasm, which
Wakes our skeptic the Lucian of modern philosophy and his Italian
works unique in its Literature. Bruno's position as a moderate

eeptic is indicated in this work by his including under the same
tegory of Asinity, the complete negation of the mystic, the unenquir-
ing suspense of the Pyrrhonist, and the devout ignorance of the
(^religionist. It is on the last, as the special epidemic of his age, that
£jis satire and ridicule fall most heavily. He brings together the
chief places in the Old and New Testaments, as well as other ancient
authors, in which asses are mentioned, and finds the various uses to
which the animal has been put, together with its well-known attri-
butes, symbolical of the qualities of its human relatives. His satirical
conclusion is that Asinity comprehends the chief human duty. To it
is assigned Divine favour, both in this world and in the next. The
terrible energy which marks his satire is shown in his conclusion of
the Preliminary Declamation, addressed ' to the curious, devout and
pious reader,' of which I translate a few sentences : —

* There is not, there is not> I say, a better mirror placed before
human eyes than Asinity and the ass ; or which demonstrates more
clearly the duty of that man who, labouring in the vineyard of the
Lord, looks for the reward of the final judgment, the enjoyment of
the heavenly supper, the repose which follows this transitory life.
No plan is better or even equal to lead, guide and conduct us with
oil possible convenience to eternal salvation than the power of that
true wisdom approved by the Divine voice. On the other hand,
nothing is more effective to engulf us in the abyss of Tartarus than
philosophical and rational speculations, which born of the senses,
grow with the discursive faculty, and ripen in the developed human
intellect. Try, try therefore to be asses all ye who are men ; and you
who are already asses, study, plan and endeavour always to proceed
from good to better, so that you may arrive at that end and dignity
which is attained, not by knowledge and effort however great, but by
faith ; and which is lost, not by ignorance and misdoing however enor-
mous, but by unbelief. If by this conduct you are found written in
the book of life x you will obtain grace in the Church militant and

1 It is on this reductio ad absurdum that the stress of Bruno's irony must be
regarded as placed. The words in the original are ' Se cosi vi disporrete, *e tali
sarete, e talmente vi governarete, vi trovarete scritti net libro de la vita, 1 etc., etc

Giordano Bruno. 295

glory in the Church triumphant, in which God lives and reigns
through all ages. Amen.' 1

In the same spirit of fierce cynical mockery, he erects Asinity into
a saint or goddess, 8 and sings her praises in a sonnet, of which I here
attempt a free translation : —

sainted Asinity. Ignorance most holy !
Stupidity most sacred ! Devotion most profound
Thou alone can'st make us learned, good and sound,
While human thought and study are void of value wholly.

Little availeth the search that men so fully
Employ by every art or science-operation,
Little availeth their sky-ward contemplation,
To gain the heavenly seat which is thy object solely.

What boots then, ye curious, your persistent exploration ?
The wish to learn the secret of nature's laws and ways,
If the stars be water, earth, or fiery exhalation ?
Holy Asinity despises wisdom's rays.

Folded hands and knees form her sole occupation,
Expecting from Providence the luck of better days,
All passes, nothing stays,
Save the fruition of that eternal peace,
Which God will give her after her decease.*

If these lines evince a spirit of Mephistophilean mockery, we must
remember that the asinine piety, against which Bruno inveighs so
vehemently, was that which opposed itself to all culture and enlighten-
ment, as well as to every rational and humane type of religion. In the
Sturm und drang of unwisdom and intolerance which then raged, some
justification undoubtedly existed for a violence which at first sight
might appear directed against every form of piety without distinction.
We are too apt to forget in our reverence for religion, that a conviction

1 Op. Ital., ii. 264, Ed. Wagner; vol. ii. p. 572, Ed. de Lagarde.

2 It is possible that this apotheosis of Asinity was suggested to Bruno (it

was at least fully justified) by the celebration of asinine virtues that took

place during the well-known * Festival of Pools. 1 The following verse, e.g. is

taken from the ' Processional ' sung daring the march of the ass and its motley

attendants to the grand altar in the cathedral of Sens. The irony is as bitter

as in Bruno's sonnet :

( Aurum de Arabia

* Thus et myrrham de Saba

Tulit in ecclesia

Virtus asinaria.' 1

See on this subject, Le Bas, Allemagne, i. p. 486.
8 Op. Ital., ii. 257, Ed. Wagner ; p. 564, de Lagarde.

(

296 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

just as profound of the sacredness and divine character of his object
of worship, may animate the searcher after truth, so that scientific
and philosophical enquiry will to him assume the aspect of a grave,
imperious, religious duty. This was undoubtedly Bruno's opinion.
An opposition to knowledge and intellectual progress, to religious
and mental freedom, no matter on what sanctions present or future
it was attempted to be based, was nothing else in his eyes but a
monstrous perversion of human duty, to be attacked and exposed
without hesitation or remorse. These extracts also point out how
vigorously Bruno protested against the excessive other-worldliness
of the middle ages, when the plea of a future world was put forth to
excuse the grossest negligence of duty in this ; and when supposed
service to God was impiously regarded as a complete exoneration
from obvious obligation to man.

(But though Bruno is thus severe on religious ignorance, he also
lashes the self-satisfied disclaimer of knowledge which marks the
acquiescent and negative skeptic — the agnostic of our own day.
With his own insatiable eagerness in every species of knowledge-
pursuit, he cannot comprehend a point of view which appears to him
absolute indifference to all progress and possible attainment. Skeptics
r therefore are, in this sense, just as much asses as the stolidly ignorant
\ among religious people. Their only distinction is, that they are
asses of another species. Thus mystical scepticism or pure negation
is a young ass, given to stray and wander. Pyrrhonic skepticism is
an ass, like the more famous one of Buridanus, which stands firmly
planted between two roads in the most abject perplexity as to which
it shall take, 1 while Christian asinity is represented by the ass and
colt in the well-known narrative of the Gospels. Bruno is clear-
sighted enough to perceive that the skepticism of the mystic, and the
voluntary ignorance of the pietist, are really akin. His treatment of

( Pyrrhonism is, however, both summary and superficial. The utmost
he can allege against it is its supposed indifference to progress. 2
Could Bruno have known not only that a disinclination to dogmatize
might advance step by step with progressive science, but that the
Greek word skeptic denotes especially the persistent enquirer, he

1 Op. Ital., ii. 272, ' la seconda par un' asina, che sta fitta tra due vie, dal
mezzo di quali mai si parte, non possendosi risolvere, per quale de le due piu
tosto debba muovere i passi.'

* Cf . De Lamp. Comb. Lull., Opera Lulli, p. 782, when after speaking of a true
confession of ignorance, which is not incompatible with the fullest and most
anxious search after truth, he proceeds : ' Mitto eos qui veritatem in densissima
caligine consistentem definientes, tunc S9 maxime cognovisse, et culmen atti-
gisse philosophies existimabant cum suam ignorantiam non ignorare sibi
viderentur.'

Giordano Bruno. 297

might have found occasion to commend it here, as in effect he does
in others of his works.

Besides his criticism of religious and skeptical Asinity, this work
also contains some strictures on dogmatic Asinity in the form then j
most preponderant and obstructive, viz. Peripateticism. One of the '
interlocutors in the conversation is a certain Onorius, whose soul in
past times has undergone a variety of transformations. Originally
it animated the body of a Theban gardener's ass, next it became the
living principle of a horse like Pegasus, and had to labour in the
service of Apollo and his court on Mount Parnassus. Afterwards it
transmigrated into the body of Aristotle. In this form he set himself
up as a reformer of science — an enterprise so much the more easy
since Socrates was dead, Plato proscribed, and he alone was left like
a one-eyed among the blind. He drew up random reports of the
opinions of the ancients in a childish and unworthy language. He
taught under the portico of the Lyceum at Athens, styled himself the
prince of Peripatetics, etc.

Thus the ass, concludes Bruno, bears sway not only in the schools.
Everywhere we see it installed, in courts and tribunals, in churches
and chapels, as well as in academies and universities. It invades
every career and every occupation of the human mind. One might say
that there are more asses among men than men among asses, and
that the greater part of mankind are members of the university,
citizens of the State of Asinity. The ass resembles that soul of the
world which animates and sustains the universe, and which is every-
where important and everywhere worshipped. It is the Triumphant
Beast of Dogma in veritable flesh and bone. Hence is explained why
the spiritual and moral ass is everywhere as much esteemed as the
physical and material ass is appreciated by particular communities.
This is why the ideal and cabalistic ass, that animal of all others
most noble, the symbol and type of intellectual perfection, deserves
to have a place in the sky not far from truth, and to become a con-
stellation.

But though the three works to which I have thus briefly alluded
represent Bruno's most free-thinking productions, they by no means
exhaust the subject of his skepticism. We have no record of any
external impulse or prompting which first started our skeptic on the
path of free thought. His early surroundings at Nola and Naples
were of a free kind, as we have already observed. But the chief
predisposing cause we must probably assign to his own analytical
intellect and vigorous imagination combined with the strong indepen-
dence of character, without which no mental excellencies are of much
avail. He seems to have learnt early in life to distrust the powers

298 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance,

of his senses, and to compare the suggestions of imagination with the
* outcome of his actual experience. When a child, he was accustomed
to survey from the humble house of his parents at the foot of Mount
Cicala the black top and barren ridge of Vesuvius. To his childish
imagination this appeared the final limit of the world, and it seemed
impossible that the smoking and burning mountain should be enli-
vened by trees or fruits. What was his surprise on afterwards
visiting the environs of Vesuvius to find the country full of orchards,
vineyards and gardens ; to use his own words, —

1 Attonitus novitate meos tunc arguo primum
Mendaces oculos.'

* Cosi,' says Professor Fiorentino, 1 recounting the anecdote, ' escla-
mava il poeta e nell* animo giovanile entrava la prima volta il dubbio.'
Alas! the disillusionizing that Bruno underwent on that occasion
was but the first of a long series of corrections of the imagination by
experience, all tending however in a contrary direction to this first
dream of childish fancy — not the transmutation of the distant black
and arid mountain region into a country of vineyards and gardens,
but the shadowy prospect of beauty and fertility changed into actual
blackness and barrenness, into smoke and devastating fire. Later in

(life we find that Bruno did not carry his distrust of sense-impressions to
the extreme which characterizes some of his fellow-skeptics. The
senses, he thinks, must be confined to their own peculiar jurisdiction :
they only inform us of matters within their sphere. They are merely

E'nstruments of the understanding. Hence the contradiction assumed
exist between the senses and the reason is only a vain objection
f Pyrrhonism. The contradiction is only apparent. When e.g. our
eyes assure us that the sun moves and the earth is immovable, they
bear witness only of what they see, and are so far right. But when
i the eyes of the mind affirm that it is the earth that revolves round
vthe sun, they testify what they know, and within their sphere they
are also correct. Of course the inference from this reasoning is that
f sense impressions are unreliable until their evidence is confirmed by
I the intellect, and therefore the distinction between Bruno and other
y skeptics is on this point only one of degree. His own tendency to
idealistic construction would also have the effect of suggesting a
distrust of sense-deliverances. Indeed, his language on this subject
is worthy of a disciple of Plato or Plotinos, for he compares sense-
perception to an eye surveying from a dark prison the colours and
forms of things as if through holes and crannies. 8 This union of

1 B. Telesio, ossia studi storici su V idea delta Natura net Rusorgimento Italiano,
vol. ii. p. 49.

2 ( Sensus est oculus in carcere tenebrarum, rerum colores et superficiem

Giordano Bruno. 299

transcendentalism and skepticism Bruno may have derived from his 1
master, the Cardinal di Cusa, and the author of the work De Docta '
Ignorantia, in whom it forms the leading characteristic. Doubt is j
therefore, with Bruno, the starting-point of all reasoning, and of all
philosophy. This is affirmed again and again in various parts of his
works, as well as exemplified in his own career; of which skepticism
is the first authentic recorded fact we possess, whatever mystical
certainties and Lullian conclusions he attained in after life. How-
ever much the abstractions of the Infinite and the One satisfied for
the time his intellect, and soothed his emotional needs, there was
a prior stage of doubt, and doubt of a sweeping and comprehensive
character. He who wishes to philosophize, says Bruno, must begin
by doubting of all things. 1 Nay, he must continue in this path, for
destruction must go hand in hand with construction, analysis with
synthesis ; at least until reason, the free light from heaven, sees her
path clear and open before her. But this undoubted prerogative of
reason to be the higher tribunal for the adjudication of truth must
not be taken to imply that all her apparent dictates and judgments
must be accepted without reservation. For oftentimes they may be
the result of bias or imperfect information, or an undue stress on a
merely external authority. They can only be accepted as indisput-
ably true when each rational judgment is consistent, both with itself
and with other things which stand in correlation with it. 8 Still, \
with all his large distrust of sense perceptions, and his more qualified
distrust of reason, Bruno was by no means a complete skeptic. His
doubt, like that of Descartes and so many others, is but the requisite ;
preliminary to conviction. What his opinion of Pyrrhonism, regard-
ing it as immovable suspense, was, we have already seen ; so defined
it was a mere tissue of puerilities worthy of a place in the same
category with the philosopher's stone and the quadrature of the circle.
Although truth was hard to come by, he did not doubt (on a priori
grounds), either the possibility of finding it or its reality when found. .
He did not distrust the human mind considered apart from its false
methods and unworthy prepossessions. In its origin it was divine ;
in its nature and tendencies, it was part of the Infinite itself;

veluti per cancellos et foramina, prospiciens, Batio tanquam per fenestram
lumen a sole derivans, et ad solem repercussum, quemadmodum in oorpore
lunee speculatur.' — De Triplici Minimo, Frankfort, 1581, p. 7.

1 'Qui philosophari concupiscit, de omnibus principio dubitans non prius
de altera contradictionis parte definiat quam altercantes audierit,' etc. — De
Triplici Minimo, p. 8.

2 ' Non ex auditu, fama, multitudine, longeevitate, titulis et ornatu, Bed de
constantis sibi atque rebus doctrinae vigore, sed de rationis lumine veritate
inspicua judicet et definiat. 1 — De Trip, Min., p. 8.

300 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

. . home
( final

therefore, in its own uncorrupted instincts and yearnings, in its own
unbiassed judgments and wise determinations, it was the veritable
home of truth. I need not add that, like that of all idealists, Bruno's
conception of truth makes it a pure intuitional and personal entity,
though allied with and forming part of the universal and infinite truth
which embraces all others as the whole comprehends its parts. The

f goal at which he arrives is therefore faith, not that of tradition and
external authority, which he stigmatizes as that most vile habit of

/credulity (vilissima consuetudo credendi), but the personal conviction

( which comes of the full and free exercise of a man's own intellect.
f But the real extent and significance of Bruno's methodical skepti-
cism we shall only be able adequately to appreciate by a cursory
glance at his systematic thought ,

Although I agree in the ordinary estimate which connects Bruno's
Idealism with Copernicus's Astronomy, I think it is easy to exag-
gerate the influence he thence derived. Under any hypothesis of
the relation of earth and heavens, Bruno must have excogitated a

^mode of thought whose tendencies would be towards the Infinite.
Common intellects, with suggestions of infinity on every side, are only
conscious of limitation. Others, placed in the narrowest environment
will infer even from surroundings so unfavourable the absolute and
unbounded. Had Bruno been born and brought up in a prison cell
he would have deduced infinity from his narrow confines. The
innate vigour of his imagination, and his impatience of all restraints,
would have rendered any ideal limits short of the illimitable
insufferably tedious and oppressive. But this being granted, we may
allow that his metaphysical interpretation of Nature, first suggested
perhaps by the inexhaustible fulness and extent of mere terrestrial
phenomena, received a firm foundation and renewed stimulus from
Copernicus's discoveries. As Bartholmess well notes, his theology
might afterwards be called by the title of Derham's Book, ' Astro-
Theology.' The main article of his creed was a primary and immedi-
ate inference from the new astronomy, i.e. The Infinite. This was the
point of view from which he contemplated everything, heaven, earth,
humanity, religion. This was the standard by which he assessed
their value, the approximation to which constituted the measure of

i their truth and validity. When the conviction burst on him that
truth, religion and morality had their roots in the Infinite and
Eternal, when he began to weary of the limits of earth, — the
bounded and partial character of the traditional verities most widely
embraced by his fellow-men, — when he stretched forth the wings
of imagination and spiritual yearning to worlds which filled the
measureless expanse above him and in comparison with which our

Giordano Bruno. 301

globe is but a tiny speck, we are not told, bat he describes the event
as comparable to the escape of a man from prison. These are his
words : —

* Away from the prison-cell narrow and gloomy,
Where so many years error closely hath bound me,
Leaving the fetters and chains which around me
My foe's cruel hand hath entwined to entomb me.'

And in other lines, which we may accept as his own description of
his mental career, he says : —

* Securely to the air my pinions I extend,

— Fearless of all barriers feigned by men of old
The heavens I freely cleave — to the Infinite I tend.

* So leaving this, to other worlds my upward flight I wend,
^Ethereal fields I penetrate, with dauntless heart and bold
And leave behind what others deem, a prospect without end.' l

As Bruno thus inferred the Infinite from Nature, especially in the
larger acceptation which modern astronomy had imparted to the
term, so the qualities with which he endued it were similarly
derived from the contents of Nature's boundlessness and variety.
Ghiefest among these was the Union of Contraries. This is in truth,
the key to Bruno's system. In its very idea the Infinite will be
complex and differentiated, not simple and uniform. This com-
plexity Bruno discerned everywhere. It was the common attribute
both of mind and matter, the chief quality of the primary substance
underlying both. Discernible in the Infinite of Nature, it also
characterized the Infinite of human reason. What to some thinkers
might seem contradictions and antagonisms mutually destructive of
each other, he regarded only as different musical notes, which com-
bined make up a broad and rich harmony (symphonia). In every-
thing existed its own contrary which its development must inevit-
ably generate and bring into clear and obvious manifestation. There
is therefore, as you may observe, a close approximation in Bruno's
idealism to modern German transcendentalism, which accounts for
the peculiar fascination he exercised on all its great luminaries from
Jacobi to Hegel. 8

1 ' . . . L' ale sicure a F aria porgo
Ne temo intoppo di cristallo o vetro
Ma fendo i cieli, e a F Infinite m' ergo

£ mentre dal mio globo agli altri sorgo
E per F etereo campo oltre penetro
Quel ch' altri lungi vede, lascio al tergo. 1
1 This aspect of Bruno's teaching has been so often commented on, both by
his biographers and by historians of philosophy, that it seems needless to give

302 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

It is instructive to observe how this composite nature of the
Infinite falls in with Bruno's skepticism. The apparent warfare of
varying principles and laws in Nature, 1 the progress by antagonism,
is only the outward reflexion of the divine motions and impulses,
doubts and opinions he found within his own being. By means of
this perpetual differentiation no wise man is satisfied with a static or
immoveable condition. The more vigorous his intellectual develop-
ment, the more conscious is he of the conflict of contradictions of
which it consists, the less disturbed by the contemplation of their
adverse relations, and the more skill and experience does he acquire
in neutralizing their varying aspects by merging them in wider
generalizations. Man in a state of ignorance has no perception of
contrariety, 2 a fact which is signified by the prominent part which
division occupies in every system of logic, and which is symbolized
by the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Hence also it comes that
ignorance is the mother of sensual felicity ; and that, as Solomon says,
1 He that increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow.'

Another correlative form of the idea of Infinity, Bruno denotes by
the metaphysical concept of the One. Like the early Greek thinkers,
he proclaimed as the issue of his investigations, ( The whole is one.'
( Oneness/ verified the term of existence, as ( the Infinite ' character-
ized its immeasurable variety and extent, as { the Absolute,' concluded
all its limitations and conditions. Here again the thought was
suggested by Bruno's Nature-investigations in combination with his
powerful imagination. The convergence of multifarious natural opera-
tions in the production of a single result is a fact frequently dwelt
upon by evidential theology as a proof of the one mind or will which
governs the universe. Bruno does not directly employ the argument
for monotheistic purposes, though indirectly his reasoning points in
the same direction. Oneness, like the Infinite, the Absolute, is merely-
a final term of his philosophy, the goal of his speculations. By its
\ means he is able to overcome incongruities in the history of philo-

a list of such authorities, most of which are easily accessible. Carriere has
some useful remarks on the subject in his Philosophische Weltanschauung, etc.,
p. 470, etc., etc. See also Brunhofer's Gk Bruno's Wdtanxchauung, pp. 151-154.

1 Op. Ital., i. p. 276.

1 Comp. Spaventa (Professor), Saggi di critica, etc, vol. i ., Napoli, 1867.
' Per la composizione della cose awiene, che nessuno si appaga del suo stato,
eccetto qualche insensato e stolto, il quale ha poca o nulla apprensione del suo
male ; gode 1' essere presente senza temer del futuro, gioisce di quel che e e per
quello in che si trova e non rimorso o cura di quel che e o pud essere ; e in fine
non ha senso della contrarieta, la quale e figurata per Palbero della scienza
del bene e del male.* — P. 184.

Giordano Bruno. 303

sophy, as well as to harmonize dissonances in the investigation of
Nature. Preceding philosophers as, e.g. Aristotle, had asserted the
operation of diverse general principles; as for instance, form and
matter, and left them as unreconciled discrepancies in the universe. 1
Bruno felt himself compelled to find a concept, or generalization,
capable of embracing both. In this higher stage of thought, matter
and form, cause and principle (i.e. according to Bruno the extraneous
and inherent cause) are completely identical. Hence the knowledge \
of that supreme unity is the object of all philosophy, and of every true J
science of Nature. He describes the extent, power and excellence of /
the Oneness in the enthusiastic terms which he lavishes on all his
ideal abstractions : 2 —

' There is only one absolute possibility, one only reality, one only
activity. Whether it be form or soul, matter or body, it is but one — ^
one only Being, one sole existence. Unity is therefore perfection, its \
character is impossibility of being comprehended, in other words to
possess neither limit, bound, nor definitive determination. The One
is infinite and immense, and therefore immoveable ; it cannot change -
its place, because outside of it there is no space; it is not engendered,
because all existence is only its own existence; it cannot perish,
because it can neither pass into nor transform itself into anything
else. It cannot increase nor diminish, because the Infinite is
susceptible neither of augmentation nor of diminution. It is liable
to alteration neither from without, because nothing exists outside of
it, nor from within, because it is at once and the same time every-
thing it can become. Its harmony is an eternal harmony since it is
unity itself. . . . Because it is self-identical, it cannot form two
beings ; it has not two kinds of existence, because it has not two
modes of being; it has not different parts, for it is not composite. It
is in the same manner, the whole and parts, all and one, limited and
unlimited, formal and informal, matter and void, animate and inani-
mate. ... In the universe, solid body does not differ from a
mathematical point, nor the centre from the circumference, nor the
finite from the infinite, nor the infinitely great from the infinitely
little. The Universe is only a centre, or rather its centre is every-
where, its circumference nowhere. We therefore do well to say that
Jupiter fills all things, remains in each part of the world, is the
centre of every being, one in the whole and by whom all is one.
Individuals who continually change do not assume a new existence,
but only another mode of being ; they are all they can be, but not all
in reality and at one time. The disposition of matter for example

1 Cf. Fiorentino, B. TeUsio, etc., vol. ii. p. 64.

1 See De La Causa Principio el Uno (Op. Ital., ii. p. 261, etc.) passim.

/

304 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

which determines the form of a horse cannot determine at the same
time the form of a man or of a plant. But all individuals, though in
different ways, participate in one and the same being. The universe,
on the other hand, comprises not only all beings, but all modes of
being ; it is, it comprehends, all modification of the substance which
in itself remains always the same. It is in this sense that Solomon
has said, " There is nothing new under the sun." '

The Absolute is another favourite abstraction by which Bruno
endeavours to express a totality of being which is opposed to every
limit, and which excludes every particular or individual character-
istic. Though applied sometimes to the supreme energy dominating \
Nature, Bruno generally employs it of the unconditional Being of
God, which makes the ascription of names, definitions and attributes,
as conceptions or entities external to His Being, almost an act of im- /
piety. /

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that these abstractions, /
though they form final determinations in Bruno's creed, were held by
him as articles of belief within the limits of his knowledge ozr
reason. They merely indicated tendencies pointing in the direction
of truth, the truth itself being both unattainable and incomprehen-
sible. That he found not only complete satisfaction in them as such,
but contemplated their excellencies with a fervent enthusiasm he can
scarce find words to express, assimilates therefore his position to that
of so many skeptics who, distrustful of attaining truth, still persist in
searching for it. If therefore Bruno found rest in his Idealism it
was not the death-like repose of the dogmatist, it partook rather of the
placidly energising ataraxia of the skeptic. Indeed, complete ideal-
ism can never be more than a condition of unstable equilibrium.

' The mental rest or peace won from
The cold and formless absolute, 1

will generally be as devoid of vital warmth and definite form as
itself, nor can it well be otherwise ; for however carefully we con-
struct our idealization, however complete appears the series of
abstractions by which we ascend to the Infinite or Absolute, however
diligently we merge like Bruno all contradictions and incongruities
in the unifying concept of the One, or going to the extreme conclusion
— the vanishing point of idealism, however determinately we assert
the identity of thought and being, there will always lurk a suspicion
that our processes are not so irrefragable as we would willingly
believe them. Nominalism will perhaps suggest that we have been
performing an ingenious hocus pocus, and deluding ourselves with
inane and barren verbosities. Experience will obtrude the possi-

X

Giordano Bruno. 305

bility that thought and being are not altogether identical, and that
the mental condition which affirms the identity is more or less arti-
ficial and unreal ; at least there will occur an occasional distrust of \
conclusions which, however valuable or convenient, stand so far aloof
from the petty affairs, the sensible restrictions, the ordinary atti-
tude of mind in which the daily life of most of us is passed. In
other words, there will occur a philosophical counterpart to the
religious conflict described by St. Paul, in which ( the flesh lusteth
against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.' The degree of
strength and coherence which metaphysical abstractions possess
depends mainly on the vigour of imagination employed in their
excogitation. Hence every scheme of transcendentalism contains in
itself germs of skepticism, possibly destined sooner or later to come to
ripeness. This truth is amply attested both by individual cases > and
by the cycles, and reactions, observable in the history of philosophy.
Bruno again and again confesses that his abstractions are ineompre- ;
hensible. We cannot tell wha.t the Infinite is in itself, we can only
discern how the different aspects and modes of the Finite seem to
converge like the different radii of an illimitable circle in the Infinite.
The One is equally unknowable ; all our experience being related to the
complexity and variety of which it is composed. As to the Absolute,
to attempt to attain it were as fatuous as to run round the circum-
ference of a circle in order to find the centre. 1 ' Our reason,' he says,
1 is incapable of comprehending that faculty which is at the same
time absolutely active and absolutely passive, it cannot conceive how
one thing may be all, nor how, as ultimate Reality, it is all. AH our
knowledge reposes on analogies and relations ; and cannot apply itself
except in a tentative and imperfect manner, to what is incomparable,
immeasurable and unique. We have no eye for a light so high, for
an abyss so profound ; and Holy Scripture joining the two extremes, says
sublimely : The darkness is no darkness to Thee, but the night is as
clear as the day. The darkness and light to Thee are both alike.' *

On the other hand, whatever may be said of the danger pertaining
to metaphysical abstractions — especially as tending to generate vague- \
ness of conception, a disposition to accept words for things, etc., I /
do not think any philosophic mind would question their imperative
character as universal concepts, or would deny their special useful-
ness in the case of intellects like Bruno's. Brought forcefully into
contact with the antinomies of the universe, finding them in his specu-
lations, whether as objective discrepancies forcing themselves on his
consciousness from without, or as contradictions evolved subjectively

1 Op. ItaL, ii. p. 343. Comp. Fiorentino, B. Telesio, ii. p. 60.
* Op. Ital., i. p. 263. B&rtholm&ss, ii. p. 140.
VOL. I. X

306 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

by the natural operations of his own intellect, — coming in contact with
them in religion, in politics, in social life — it was surely advantageous
to find, or at any rate assume, a centre in which all these various
» differences finally converged ; to discover a metaphysical ark which
might carry him safely over the boisterous waves and conflicting
currents of human beliefs and opinions. In the Infinite, the Absolute,
and the One, as into the measureless ocean wherein the numberless
myriads of rivers and streams in every country and from every
direction are finally absorbed and lost, he was able to concentrate the
different attributes of Deity, the varying aspects of Nature, the mani-
fold and diverse conclusions of the human reason. Here Liberty and
Necessity abandoned their ancient enmity and became reconciled.
Here divine justice and mercy, immutable law and personal volition,
became united. Here evil was no longer the irreconcilable opponent
of good ; it was rather its privation, or possibly its necessary com-
plement. Here the Finite was not the contradiction, but a part,
infinitesimal though it might be, of the Infinite. The space occupied
by a single human being or the insect crawling at his feet, formed a
portion of Immensity. The smallest division of time was an in-
/ dissoluble fraction of eternity. 1 In a word, the temple of the Infinite,
with Bruno for its high priest, witnessed the union of many meta-
physical and ethical couples which at first sight might seem, if not
wholly incompatible, at least very ill-assorted.

But leaving these abstractions it is time to enquire what are the
exact relations they bear (1) to God, (2) to Nature.

As to the first, they are merely designations of the Supreme Being.
They serve to express not so much His attributes as His essence —
\ His only conceivable existence. He alone is the Infinite, the One, and
the Absolute — the universal existence filling all space and all time,
manifesting itself in all motion, life and activity — the cause, principle
and sustainer of Nature, nay the spiritual expression or definition of
Nature itself. In theology, as in philosophy and physical science,
Bruno's conceptions are all infinite, illimitable. A personal Deity
extramundane and apart from Nature, he could not understand. All
the attributes of Deity in his Theodicee are as infinite and compre-
hensive as Deity itself — nay, they are only varying aspects — denomi-
nations of the self-same universal Essence.

It was because the ordinary definition of the Trinity involved the
idea of division in the one indissoluble unity of God, that Bruno re-
fused to accept it in that sense, and adopted a more metaphysical
method of explaining it. ' The supreme Being is the substance of the
universe, the pure essence of all life and reality, the source of all

1 Comp. Bartholmess, ii. 854.

Giordano Bruno.

307

I

<
C

z

x
O

2

H

>

o
o

m

(A
CA

z
>

m

H
X

<

S

1

o

o

X

o

>
z

>

being, the force of all forces, the virtue of all virtues. ... If

~* all existence, Divinity is

basis both of Nature and of

auses, the ruling principle

g also perfect He is every-

ty and activity, are inse-

ived separately and apart

arnal cause of all things,

,intains them in life. By

. activity the existence and

ale life, one immense and

nation, the supreme Being

nal cause of all that exists.

us the universal cause and

•eason, in other words, the

uces all. Being also the

I differentiates everything

the soul of the world, the

every form of existence.

activity in every part of

totality, His omnipresence

wonderful character of His

or outside of all, this is His '

; essence should be above

be superior or external to

lould be divorced from the

Beings constitutes clearly

unity of all beings. The

vast empire are shown by

This perfection consists in

tout creation attain actual

From the infinitely varied

ented in creation, we must

one and absolutely simple.

It is rather by means 01 tnis mm vim unity, this identity with Him-
self, that He forms part of all created things. It is because He does
not Himself cease to exist, that existence enjoys perpetuity and life.

1 * Profundius naturae uniuscujusque fund amentum est Deus.' — Op. Lat., p.
473. Comp. Op. Ital., i. p. 130.

8 ' Natura naturans. Deus in rebus, in creaturis expressus ' — ' in Natura ex
vi mentis ordinatricis.' — Op. Lat., p. 47.

* Mens super omnia Deus est, Mens insita omnibus Natura, Mens omnia per-
vadens ratio.' — De Iriplici Jiin., p. 7.

*\

08 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

The unity, identity and simplicity of the Supreme Being is blended
with His truth and His goodness. His truth is of such a nature,
that if it did not exist nothing would be true. The nearer any being
approximates to the Infinite the more truth he has. The same rule
holds good of his goodness, whether moral or natural. Everything
good that Nature possesses comes from God. Whatsoever is good
morally and spiritually has been inspired or established by God. God
is the legislator of the physical and moral law of the universe because
He is the author of all the principles which control both force and
intelligence. By virtue of His truth and goodness God is more than
the Creator of the world — He is its judge and its benefactor.

His wisdom and knowledge are not less than His truth and good-
ness. Not only does He behold all things, but He makes all visible
things to be seen. He is therefore both the eye which discerns all
things, and the light which illumines all eyes and all objects. Here
Bruno touches the philosophy both of Malebranclie and Berkeley, and
gives expression to one of the profound thoughts of the Old Testa-
ment, ' In Thy light shall we see light/

The will of God, i.e. His providence, which is inseparable from His
prescience, conducts and directs all thoughts to the best possible end.
The will of a Being who is almighty and omniscient triumphs over
>all things. One effect of the Divine will is the revelation of it we
have in Nature. Other effects are the beauty and harmony which
mark creation. By its very perfection the will of God is at once
necessity and absolute liberty, in the same way that in every moral
man liberty and necessity are identical. 1 Thus the essence of God
comprehends all things, without itself being capable of being com-
prehended. It includes all duration and all space. It is the end and
term of all things. It is both at the base and the summit of the scale
of beings without the power of self-definition or determination. The
source and plenitude of all perfections, He cannot be adequately con-
ceived by beings as imperfect as ourselves. God cannot properly be
named ; or rather, He ought to receive every name which can express
supreme grandeur and superiority. The designation most suitable
to Him is ' the Being of Baings.' God is { He who is/ or * That which
is ' (qui est vel quod est), a possible reminiscence, it may be added,
of the ' I am that I am ' of the third chapter of Exodus.

As God is the theological expression of the Infinite and the One,
so the concrete form of these abstractions is found in Nature. Nature
was Bruno's school from which he drew his physics and metaphysics :
his conclusions from the seen, and his speculations on the unseen.
From its extent, especially as revealed by the new astronomy, he

1 Comp. Spaventa, op. cit., p. 145.

Giordano Bruno. 309

inferred the Infinite. From the universality and variety of its
activity he deduced the immanence and omnipresence of Divine
energy. From the unity of design pervading its multifarious opera-
tions, from the oneness and identity of the substance which assumed
so many forms, he concluded the oneness of its Author. Nature was r
therefore regarded by him as the incarnation or materialization of the
Divine Being. To Bruno, as to Raymund of Sabieude, it was, in its
own province, a complete Revelation, the first unfolding of the Divine
mind. Not only does it reveal its Creator, but it is the only mode by
which His existence and attributes can become manifest to men. It is
in and by Nature that God recognizes His own being and perfection,
and by the same means only are we able to comprehend Him. It \
should be added that Bruno is not always consistent in his mota- J
physical interpretation of Nature ; sometimes he employs the tran- /
scendentalism of the Neo-Platonists, according to which God may be
conceived without Nature, though Nature is inconceivable without God.
At other times, and most generally, he adopts the pure naturalism of ,
Spinoza, which limits the divinity by the bounds of actual existence.
But whatever the point of view, Bruno is an ardent worshipper of
Nature. In this respect he yields to none of the votaries of naturalism
that belong to the Renaissance. He describes her charms in the
amorous language a passionate lover might employ of his mistress.
Professor Fiorentino * is so affected by Bruno's ardour that he appears
ready to share it : * Questa vaga donna, bella, nuda, schietta raggiante,
amorosa, carezzovole e la philosophia per Giordano Bruno, qual
meraviglia s' ei se ne sente profondamente innamorato ? ' But it is
not Nature in her static, materialistic aspects with which Bruno is __
enamoured. In that sense indeed she had for him no existence. It
is Nature, moving, energizing, fluctuating, changing, instinct with life
and energy, that is the object of Bruno's adoration. This was the
' Anima Mundi,' or Nature-soul, which as we have seen he identified
with the third person of the Trinity. For if on the one hand Nature
is an instrument of Divine Providence, she is also a living power, a
creative faculty standing in the same relation to inert matter as a
sculptor does to his marble, or a painter to his canvas. Hence the
visible creation is only an image, an iddlon of that incomprehensible
spirit which fills and animates all things. Bruno thus shares with
his compatriots Telesio, Vanini and Campanella the idea of Nature as
a colossal animal, a living being of infinite extent and most elaborate
organization, which engenders and nourishes, and in turn destroys
and devours, all subordinate beings — the common source of life and
of death and of every other movement and energy in creation.

1 B. Telesio, op. cit., p. 48.

3io The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Such is Nature in her totality grasped, as Bruno loved to grasp all
f such concepts, from the point of view of the Infinite. What Nature
| is in detail in the relation of single parts to the enormous and com-
\ posite whole he tells us in his Doctrine of Monads. These spiritual
atoms stand in the same relation to the Infinite as a material atom
stands to the physical universe. They constitute principles of con-
tinuity which underlie all transitory existence — the minute indestruct-
ible Bases on which all individual beings are founded, and of which
they are so many superstructures and developments. The monad is
the centre of all activity in living beings, and of mere existence in
inanimate things. Without itself possessing those attributes, it is
the basis of everything that has movement, figure or extension. By
its self-multiplication and division, by its countlessly diverse co-ordina-
tions and associations, it becomes the actual cause of all the varied,
processes and phenomena we see in Nature. The analogy on whicfy
Bruno founds and by which he explains his Monad Theory is thje
property of Numbers. 1 "The unit must needs enter into every possible
combination of number, as its initial basis, its final constituent and i/ts
absolute measure. Similarly into all the different products of Nature,
endlessly various as they are, enters the monad as the eternal unit of
each. All beings, in whatever scale of existence, are only different
aggregates of monads, and all natural processes, simple or complex,
are only varied transformations and modifications of these priijnary
units, just as all the operations of arithmetic start from the numerical
unit. There will of course be a hierarchy among monads sis in
numbers. Highly endowed and complex beings such as manf will
consist of a far greater number of monads than beings of a /lower
order. Every species of being may be represented by its own /lowest
determination, which thereby becomes its own special monad, /just as
in arithmetic the number ten is taken as the basis or unit/ of the
decimal system. Throughout the whole of creation, entering into
every process and every form of existence, runs this chain of /monads,
as a permanent and living principle, ultimately ending where Lit begins
with the Supreme Being. /

The root-thought of Bruno's monad-speculations is easily plerceived.
He makes the law and order of numbers subserve the sam^fe purpose
in his scheme of philosophy as Spinoza's universal substance does in
his own system; the same office in point of fact which numbers
have continually discharged in the history of philosophy from the
time of Pythagoras downwards. It is his principle of cohesion and

1 *Numeru8 est accidens monad is, et monas est essentia miitieri: sic com-
positio accidit atomo, et atom us est essentia compositi/ etc. — De Trip, Mai.,
etc., p. 10.

Giordano Bruno. 311

uniformity applied to the details of nature-products and processes :
hence it is only a crude mode of explaining such truths as are
expressed by the correlation and conservation of forces, the perpetuity
of energy, the laws of causation, gravitation, chemical affinity, and
other formulas of the same kind with which modern science abounds.
Perhaps we may go even further, and may regard the return to atoms
and molecules which distinguishes some departments of modern
thought, as a reproduction to a certain extent of such theories as
Bruno's monads; nor is it difficult to foresee that a still greater
scope for speculations of a similar kind will inevitably mark the
science of the future. The actual practical value of Bruno's theories
is of course nil ; but the monads both of his own philosophy and that
of Leibnitz, their descendants, will always retain historical interest,
as connecting the speculations of Demokritus and the Greek atomists
with those of scientists of our own day.

But, besides the order of natural processes, Bruno's monads help
to explain, at least to illustrate, the unifying or merging all contra-
rieties in an absolute oneness. Just as infinite number comprehends
every conceivable numerical quantity, no matter how divergent from
each other, so does the One include and involve every imaginable
discrepancy and contradiction ; however great their mutual differences.
By this means, as we have observed, Nature loses all her antinomies ;
corruption and production, progress and regress, death and life, good
and evil, beauty and ugliness, perfection and imperfection, form com-
ponent elements, unit-sums of varying amounts, of the same absolute
innumerable whole. As also all numbers form a series leading from
one to infinity, so do the processes of Nature, in harmony with our
own instincts, tend towards the Infinite: Bruno's conception thus/
harmonizing with St. Paul's words, ' The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together.'

That these speculations point in the direction of Pantheism is clear;
but that Bruno was an undoubted Pantheist is not so obvious.
Nothing is easier than to discover in the ideas of comprehensive and
imaginative thinkers when applied to the infinitive existence and
omnipresent energy of the Supreme Being, traces of Pantheism ; as
we have already noticed. Bruno's metaphysical intellect and poetic
imagination rendered him peculiarly liable to excesses of this kind.
The very attempt to set bounds to the Infinite, to bring it, in other
words, within the limits of our own narrow and finite existence, would
have seemed to him both false and impious, — false as contravening the
witness afforded by Nature of its Author's infinity ; impious as placing
a limit, for our personal convenience, to the illimitable. Hence many
are the passages in his works in which he seems to confound the

3 1 2 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Creator with His creation — the material with the efficient cause — the
living force with its physical manifestation. In the same general
direction of Pantheism point also his views of the necessity of
creation, his definition of the Creator as ' Naturizing nature ' (natura
naturans), his doctrine of monads, and of the ' Anima mundi.' On the
other hand must be taken into account the mode in which he fre-
quently describes the Deity as possessing a separate Being and
personality, distinct from the universe of His creation, terming him
the Creator, the mind and orderer of all things. On a complete view
of the question, we may pronounce the evidence for Bruno's Pan-
theism doubtful, and this is the conclusion to which the most
impartial of his biographers and critics have also arrived.

But though I admit Bruno's Pantheistic leanings, and his fre-
quently expressed affection for the Divine which exists in Nature,
neither this nor the cognate abstractions of the Infinite and Absolute,
so far as they express definite and final attainment, are the supreme
objects of his passionate love. Of all of these he admits the inherent
incomprehensibility. Like Lessing, he prefers search for truth to
discovered truth ; or as he is a poet almost more than a philosopher,
we may compare him to Sir John Suckling and his preference for
desire as superior to fruition. In this respect Bruno is, as I have
' already hinted, a complete skeptic ; as one who loves and searches for
; what he is aware he cannot attain. Bruno's mistress, like that of so
many platonizing thinkers, is ( intellectual Beauty' — the passion rather
than its object, or the passion transformed and elevated to an object. 1
He describes her charms with an ardent tenderness and ecstatic
rapture which a material and human object of passion could hardly
have inspired. The work in which he does this is called Oli eroici
furorij and we may take it, I think, as a philosophical 'sursum
corda ' ! the point where his idealism becomes sublimated and con-
secrated into a cultus. M. Bartholmess has well observed how
Bruno attempted in this work to bring about a revolution in Italian
ideas respecting love. The poetry of the Troubadours, of Dante
and Petrarca, had, while eliminating, or at least refining, the more
sensual elements of the earthly passion, exalted it to an extravagant
and absurd excess. Treading in the steps of Plato and Plotinus,
Bruno wished to divert the sentiment in another direction, and to
another object — not the human form, with its attributes of perishable-
ness and mortality, ought to be the object of the wise man's affections;
but divine beauty and spiritual wisdom, which is invisible, unchange-
able, and imperishable, nay, which is but one aspect of God Himself.

1 See this especially brought out in the commentary to his De Immeruo:
Works, national edition, vol. i. p. 208.

Giordano Bruno. 313

Dearer than any earthly mistress to the impassioned lover ought to
be Divine wisdom to the thinker. Not that he can expect to gain
fall possession of the object of his passion. He is aware that his
knowledge, his powers, are finite, though his desires may be infinite.
Sofia, like truth, is to be courted and pursued, never fully achieved.
Still some progress may be made by the earnest lover: there are
degrees of even infinity and corresponding powers of those who pursue
it. Man pursuing Divine wisdom can approximate to what he cannot
reach. Though he cannot fully apprehend God, he can gradually
become more God-like ; though he cannot grasp truth, he can become
truthful ; though he may not possess supreme wisdom, he may become
wiser. Thus the career of the intellectual man becomes an enthu-
siasm of devotion ; an appetite, a longing, a perpetual yearning and
striving for Divine wisdom ; and Bruno employs all the images and
parables of spiritual and mystic longing he can find in holy writ or
elsewhere to illustrate the power and sublimity of his sacred pro-
pension. We may here observe that Bruno, like Pascal and Hirnhaym
passes, at least he evinces a strong desire to pass, from skepticism
to mysticism, from the attitude of the searcher to the ecstatic rapture
of the intuitionist. It is indeed evident that this was the direction
which his intellect had come to take during the latter part of his
life ; and which his Lullian tendencies so clearly exemplify ; though
I do not think it correct to say with Hitter, that Bruno passes
through skepticism and enquiry into religious faith, in the common
acceptation of the term. On the other hand, the point of importance
in Bruno's mystic tendencies, and in his devotion to supreme wisdom,
is that he thereby finds an object of worship which is not divorced
from human reason and enquiry; and therefore different from the
common faith both of Catholics and Protestants. A religious Belief
and worship into which reason did not enter as its primary con-
stituent, which did not embrace to the fullest extent the results of
human learning and investigation, was one Bruno could not under-
stand. We have already noticed the bitter contempt he displays
for the holy Asinity, which in his opinion had seduced mankind, and
withdrawn them from their true allegiance to the God of wisdom
and truth. The enthusiastic adoration of Sophia (wisdom) formed
the opposite pole in his religious philosophy to Ass-worship. The
Infinite he learnt to adore in the sublime temple of Nature, whose
holy of holies it occupied with its awful and illimitable presence ; and
he bestowed upon it all the powers of his reason and intelligence, as
well as the love and worship of his religious sentiment.

Reading Bruno's Eroicifurori, one is forcibly reminded of Schleier-
macher's glowing description of Spinoza as a * God-intoxicated man ' :

314 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

{ Ihn durchdrang der hohe Weltgeist; das Unendliche war seia
Anfang und sein Ende, das Universum seine einzige und ewige Liebo ;
in heiliger Unschuld und tiefer Demnth spiegelte er sich in der ewiger
Welt : Voller Religion war er und voll heiligen Geistes ; und darum
steht er audi da allein und unereicht, Meister in seiner Kunst, aber
erhaben liber die profane Zunft, ohne Jiinger und ohne Burgerrecht ! '
With a trifling modification of one or two terms, this magnificent
eulogy is as applicable to Bruno as to Spinoza. Indeed, of the two
I think the author of Gli eroici furori is a few stages further
advanced in God-intoxication than even Spinoza. That a man capable
of conceiving such a noble and elevated object for human affections,
of being permeated by such a divine passion, 1 should have actually
suffered death as an atheist, must be pronounced one of the most
monstrous perversions of justice which defile the pages of history.
Unhappily, it is not a solitary instance of the irony which occasionally
overrules human destinies, and with diabolical humour prescribes
slavery as the lot of lovers of liberty, compulsory falsehood or the
stake as the destiny of lovers of truth ; as well as persecution and
death as an atheist for the God-intoxicated enthusiast. 2

The relation which Bruno's idealism bears to his free-thought, and
his vehement vindication of the rights of the human conscience, both
public and private, is a distinguishing feature of his speculations.
Man's reason being an integral part of the universal reason, partakes
also of its qualities ; it is therefore both necessary and absolute. As
such it forms the true basis both of morality and of speculative
freedom. Bruno thus anticipates Descartes in laying stress on the
reason, or consciousness, as the supreme principle of knowledge.
Both reason as the intellectual, and conscience as the ethical, organ of
truth are free and autonomous, partaking as they do of the unre-
stricted liberty of their Creator. Indeed, the knower and the thing
known do not exist, except so far as God knows them. All clearness,
all evidence emanates from Him. Senses, conscience, reflexion, reason,
all the modes and stages of intelligence, the different branches of
knowledge, all the efforts of mind and of wisdom, need that divine

1 Few things in Bruno's works are more remarkable than the depth and
sincerity of his God-passion. The title which next to Philcsophus he most
affected is Theophilus (lover of God). From his point of view no doubt the
terms are synonymous.

* ( Bruno e stato bruciato vivo a Roma come sprezzatore della religione e di
Dio. Oramai sappiamo che cosa importano questo accuse, e possiamo dire
anche noi con tutta ragione. u Eh! Prole dolor/ res eo jam pervenit ut qui
assertt fatentur, se Dei ideam non habere, et Dtum non nisi per res creatas (quorum
cauaas ignorant) cognoscere, non erubescant philosophos atheismi accusant"' — Spa-
venta, Saggi, p. 167, quoting Spinoza, Tract. Theo. Pol., om op., ii. p. 82.

Giordano Bruno. 315

light, which, itself inaccessible like the sun, still irradiates all objects
within its luminous sphere. It is because every perception, every
knowledge, whether of the senses or the mind, has God for its first
source, for its principal organ, that man ought to rely implicitly upon
verifiable evidence. God does not deceive, nor can He be deceived.
He cannot deceive because he is unable to will deception, His will being
as perfect as His knowledge. Truth therefore, so far as attainable, is
manifested by enquiry and research ; and all reasonable methods of
pursuing it are to be followed freely and fearlessly, with the con-
viction that whatever deficiency may arise from the inevitable limita-
tions of our senses and knowledge, is not to be compared with the
dense ignorance which must result from their entire disuse.

Bruno therefore concludes that the human mind, by its native
instincts and operations, is made for knowledge and for freedom. No
bounds indeed can be rightly placed to the speculative and imagina-
tive powers of man. In this respect the microcosm is a reflection of
the macrocosm, sharing its most peculiar attribute of infinity. Hence
any repression of research is an indignity offered, through man, to the
Highest Reason which he shares. He lays it down that thought, by its
own free spiritual nature, cannot be the object of punitive justice ; for
if sincere it can be no offence to God or to human law. Thus personal,
and in a considerable degree, political freedom, is the outcome, the
dictate, of his own mental constitution. The limitless character of
his thoughts and speculations he transferred, as far as possible, to
his practical and political life. The process no doubt was, or might
have been, somewhat dangerous ; but political liberty in the sixteenth
century was by no means sufficiently advanced to run the risk of
encountering such dangers. Nor was Bruno unaware that the social
and political condition of men necessitated some limitations ; though
to every concession in this direction he is careful to add the proviso
that the philosophical and religious freedom of the individual should
be as much as possible respected.

Having thus brought before you a few of the salient points in the
philosophy of this most remarkable thinker, it is time to sum up this
part of my subject.

Bruno was one of those gigantic intellects, those myriad-minded
men whose multifarious erudition, eclectic methods, and many-sided
sympathies render a summary of their operation very difficult, if not
impossible. Like a survey of a widely-extended landscape, or an
enormous building, the conspectus will only be a piecing, more or less
rude and imperfect, of separate and fragmentary points of view.
Employing his own illustration of the infinite powers and feelings of
the human mind, we might almost say, of his own intellect, that its

r

c

(

3 1 6 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

centre is everywhere, its circumference nowhere. A child of the
sixteenth century, his speculations comprehend and his sympathies
embrace methods of thought current in ancient times on the one hand,
and in our own day on the other. The immense range of his studies
is proved by the fact that there is hardly an author, certainly not
a subject known in his day, to which he does not seem to have paid
attention, and on which he has not thrown some light.

1. To us his chief interest arises from his skepticism. The nature
and extent of this I have already glanced at. As in the case of so
many other philosophical enquirers it was, perhaps, more in intent than
reality, limited and methodical. Bruno doubted to know. Skepticism
was the foundation of his philosophy and his science. Surrounded by
despotic powers and principles, philosophical, religious, and political,
which demanded a blind submission from every man, Bruno boldly
protested against them all. They were so many external restric-
tions and antiquated prejudices which possessed no inherent validity
except so far as they received the approval of a man's own con-
science. Hence he opposed himself to Peripateticism, to scholasti-
cism, to mediaeval science, and Papal Christianity. He even carries
I his opposition to the ruling convictions of his time further than his
^-own system of thought appears altogether to warrant. For although
e.g. he himself places such stress on abstractions, he attacks the
abstract ideas of scholastic logic in the true spirit of nominalistic
criticism. The truth moreover that he finally attains by his idealism
is so far imperfect and indemonstrable that his highest knowledge
consists in a direction rather than a goal, an effort than an achieve-
ment, a perpetual struggle than a definite crowning victory. He also
shares with Galileo, 1 and other thinkers of the time, the conviction
of a distinct separation between theology and philosophy, and is so
far a maintainor of double truth. Indeed this doctrine could have
presented no difficulty to a thinker who regarded truth as essentially
multiple, though its various forms and aspects finally met and were
united in the absolute one.

Nor can it be said that the final merging of his own idealism
in the mystic cabbala of Raymund Lulli imparted the conviction of
absolute and demonstrable truth for which he had been searching all
his life. Notwithstanding his stress on that philosophy so signally
manifested by making it the subject of so many of his works, not-

1 Comp. Berti, II Procenso originate di Galileo GalU*, p. xxx. « Egli (Galileo)
con ragioni alle quali, nulla si potrebbe oggi ancora aggiungere, so9tiene
nettamente non solo la convenienza, ma la necessita di separare la scienza
dalla religione, e di dare nelle dispute il primo luogo non gia alle parole della
Scrittura, ma alle osservazioni ed alle dimostrazioni.'

Giordano Bruno. 317

withstanding his ingenious manipulations of numbers, alphabets,
abstractions, physical and hyperphysical entities, notwithstanding
the claim of Lulli to have discovered a key to human omniscience, the
ultimate feeling concerning it in Bruno's mind was imperfect attain-
ment. Like his fellow pilgrims through the darkness and mist of
occult science, Agrippa and Vanini, Bruno also arrives at the con-
clusion that metaphysics cannot yield that perfect conviction of truth
which its earnest seeker desiderates. He was too keen-sighted not
to perceive that whatever advantage metaphysical terms and ab-
stractions might have as ideal comprehensions of diverse realities,
the standpoint was essentially imaginative and individual, and that
the prof under the research, the more recondite and unattainable be-
came its object. There is a remarkable passage 1 near the conclusion
of his chief Lullian treatise in which he announces his agreement
with the De Vanitate Scientiarum of Agrippa concerning Lulli's art.
In universal propositions he says, no one but a fool would think he
attained perfect knowledge after all his study. Even Aristotle, who
of all philosophers attributed most power to the human intellect,
admitted that in the ultimate substances and differentiae of things
the eye of our understanding was not otherwise than the eye of a
night-bird when directed to the sun. At the same time he repudi-
ates the skepticism which remains satisfied with the admission of its
ignorance. He merely claims for Lulli's art that whatever is possible
in all sciences by way of generalization, is acquired by it as by the
cause which in all things is most general. 8

An interesting question, especially connected with Bruno's untimely
end, is the relation of his skepticism to Papal Christianity. It is
generally assumed to have been oue of open hostility ; it would be
more truly designated as one of divergency. As a rule Bruno was
more un- Christian than anti-Christian. No doubt there were aspects
of Papal ecclesiasticism to which he was thoroughly opposed, e.g. its
compulsory dogmatic spirit with which he contended throughout his
life. The crucifix thrust in his face by those who were piling burn-
ing faggots around him, was a melancholy symbol of the manner in

1 De Lampade Combinatoria Lulliana, Lulli, Opera, p. 782. 'In universis
etenim nullus nisi plusquam mediocriter stultus veram et non vanitati similem
poet omne studium se nactum esse noverit scientiam; quod sane et is qui
maxime omnium philoeophorum humano ingenio tribuisse videtur Aristoteles
testatur, ubi rerum substantias ultimasque differentiae, innominabiles imper-
ceptibilesque dicit et oculum intelligentiffi nostra ad manifestissima se habere
naturae haud alitor quam nocturne avis oculos ad lumen solis.'

* 'Quod ergo per omnes scientias habere tandem possibile est, per artem
istam utpoti per causam maxime generalem acquiritur.' — Lulli, op. loc cit., p.
732.

3 1 8 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

which Christianity had always been presented for his acceptance and
adoration — a harsh, bitter, narrow, ignorant bigotry, administered
often by men who were incarnations of the worst vices that could
disgrace humanity. Nor did Protestantism, as he had experienced it,
at Geneva and Marburg, represent the religion of Christ in a much
more inviting guise. Some idea of Christianity, conjoined with toler-
ance and a respect for intellectual freedom, he may have derived from
his sojourn at Wittenberg; though even here the phenomenon was
only evanescent. There is no trace in his writings of any formal
attempt to extract the pure gold of Christ's words and life from the
dross by which human ambition had surrounded it ; and yet there are
intimations in his interrogatory before the Inquisition that this aspect
of Christianity had not altogether escaped him. When asked, e.g.
what he considered necessary to salvation, his reply was : l Faith,
hope, and charity,' an answer which, with its implication of the
superior merits of charity, must have sounded satirical on such an
occasion. His statement, adduced by Mocenigo, of the corruption of
the Church, compared with its primitive purity ; and the coercive me-
thods then employed in propagating Christianity, contrasted with the
persuasive and rational modes first used for the purpose ; his expressed
estimate of the evidential value of miracles, viz. that the higher
attestation of Christ's religion comes from the precepts of the Gospel ;
all point in the direction of an attempt to distinguish the divine
elements in Christianity from the human incrustations in which they
had become embedded. 1 But after making due allowance for these
intimations, we must admit that Bruno's conception of Christianity —
indeed his view of every religion, is one-sided and imperfect. There
was a predisposition, closely connected with his own mental tenden-
cies, to make religion entirely synonymous with intellectual culture,

1 Further light on this important point may be expected from the hoped-for
publication of a number of Bruno's unpublished works in the possession of
Mr. Abraham de Noroff. In a communication which this gentleman has made
to Signor Berti, and which the latter has inserted among his collection of
Bruno documents, he says : * Nous appallons 1 'attention du monde savant sur
les passages du MS. qui levent completement l'accusation calomnieuse qui a
ete portee contre le oeldbre philosophe italien d'avoir professe des dogmes
antichretiens, et la transmigration des ames. Les passages consigned sur les
ff. 28. v. et. 48 v. ainsi que les propositions emises dans de livre : De triginta
Statuarum (pp. 114-121), qui adoptent la rix&ation, qui s'appuyent sur les
paroles du Christ (dont le tres saint nom est trace par la main de Bruno en
leltres majuscules), et enfin qui parlent de l'immaterialile et de la substan-
tiality de Tame, protestent hautement contre les farouches ennemis de Bruno,
auxquels sans doute il applique les paroks du Christ citees a la f. 48. v.: Hie
dies vestra et potestas tenebrarvmS— Berti, Document^ etc., p. 112.

Giordano Bruno. 319

instead of regarding moral discipline and spiritual feeling as its
necessary concomitants. Just as there are men in our day who think
Christ should have foretold the latest development of modern science,
so Christianity, to have been perfect in Bruno's eyes, ought to have
announced the Copornican Astronomy instead, perhaps, of the Sermon
on the Mount. Christianity had too much of the passive stolidity of
the age, and not enough of the daring and imagination of the winged
Pegasus, to satisfy Bruno's aspirations. Religion as the exponent of
the Eternal Mind ought to possess an infinite, necessary, and univer-
sal character, 1 whereas Christianity, in its traditional development,
seemed to him to have a merely local and partial aim. Sacchetti, in
one of his novels, 9 relates how, in the Dante craze at Ravenna in the
fourteenth century, a certain youth took the burning wax-lights from
before the crucifix on the altar and plated them before the tomb of
the poet. Bruno also wished to remove the wax-lights designed to do
honour to Christianity, and to place them on the altar he had erected to
the Infinite and the One, the all-filling, all-animating Creator of the
universe. Hence he had no objection to those speculative doctrines of
Christianity which were allied to the Infinite, or were susceptible of a
metaphysical interpretation. Indeed, we have in Bruno a foreshadow-
ing of the peculiar interpretation of Christian dogma which was so
common in the first half of this century among German idealists, the
disciples of Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach. He had, as we have seen,
no objection to a Trinity in which the second Person was the Wisdom
perpetually emanating from its Divine source, and the third Person
was the Anima Mundi,orsoul of the universe, ' the Lord and Giver of
Life ' (though Bruno would have denied the personality) of the Nicene
Creed. He would not have disputed the Incarnation interpreted as
a spiritual process. 8 Immortality and a future life fell in completely
with his general scheme of thought provided he was not compelled
to admit a bodily resurrection, and that some scope for transmigra-
tion, physical and mental, were conceded him. On the whole view
of the question we may say that there is* nothing in his mode of
thought directly opposed to the first pure form of Christianity, what-
ever may be said of his attitude to the Papal caricature of it extant
in his time. We must remember, in estimating Bruno's relation to

1 Spaventa, op. cit., p. 168.

* Novelle, cxxi. Ed. Barbara, ii. p. 481.

* Cf. Berti, p. 856. It was perhaps the materialistic mode of explaining it
that suggested to Bruno his illustration of it by the Centaur, though such
illustrations and analogies were in his time, as well as subsequently, often
employed to explain the doctrines of Christianity Comp. Bishop Huet's
hardly less profane illustrations of the Incarnation: Dem. Evan. Ed. vi., p. 466.

c

V

320 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

the Church, that he openly admitted the fact of his hostility. In his
interrogatory before the Inquisition he candidly acknowledges that
he had cherished, from his earliest years, doctrines and opinions irre-
concileable with those of the Church ; and all that he pleads for in
his defence is that this divergence of thought and sentiment did not
constitute that fatal breach with dogmatic Christianity which his
enemies supposed. He emphatically disclaimed all desire to see
Christianity supplanted by any other religious faith ; and confessed
his desire to see it allied closely with metaphysics. The conception
of a universal religion, like his own Infinite, in which all churches
and creeds, everything local and temporary should be merged in the
Absolute, in which, to use St. Paul's words, 'Even Christ Himself
shall be subject to -Him that put all things under Him, that God may
be all in all,' no doubt swept occasionally before his eyes, but only as
a vague, misty dream of the future * — the apocalypse of an idealistic
thinker. Bruno's imagination was, we know, fond of soaring beyond
both realities and possibilities ; and due allowance should be made for
this fact when we meet, as we often do in his writings, schemes of
thought-ideals of human progress, and vague vistas of futurity on
which he himself would have laid no stress as assured convictions or
articles of faith. Nor should we forget another trait of his intellect
which, if neglected, might involve us in considerable misapprehension
of his character. I mean the daring and impetuous nature of his
speculations, which continually seduces him beyond the limits of his
real intellectual and religious standpoint.

2. In that curious letter of Bruno's to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford,
which I noticed, he styles himself among other titles, ' The awakener
of sleeping minds.' * Few designations would better express the
main influence which Bruno exercised on his time; but it was an
effect produced more by his rationalism and eclecticism than by his

1 The passages in Bruno's works in which a dislike to all positive religions

seems manifested, are evidently based on the condition of their resemblance,

more or less, to the spurious Christianity of his time. Hence when he says of

these: —

( Humanam turbant pacem sceclique qnietem

Extinguunt mentis luoem, neque moribus prosunt,'

he was clearly drawing from his own experience of Romanism. A tolerant
religion, which inculcated as primary articles in its creed, peace, culture, and
morality, he would doubtless have cordially approved. Bruno's anticipations
of a regenerated world are thus conveyed in his last published work : —

* Novi Telluris faciem nihilominus esse
Fulgentem, vere sanctum et venerabile sidus.'

De TVipLici minimo et mensura, p. 2.
* ' Dormitantiam animorum excubitor.' — Comp. Bartholmess, L p. 97, note 2.

Giordano Bruno. 321

skeptical tendencies, so far as these influences are independent of
each other. It was as a Free-thinker that Bruno was especially
known to his contemporaries — one who carried bold and unscrupulous
speculation into every province of knowledge, not as a mere denier
of accepted doctrines. He is therefore an illustration of the truth
that breadth of culture, eclecticism and toleration will subserve the . .
same purpose as negation in undermining any narrow system of//
dogma. Indeed of the two it is the more effective and lasting"
method: the true opposite to dogma being not negation, which may
be just as dogmatic as assertion, but latitudinarianism, freedom of
research, and full toleration for all sincere and rationally attained
conclusions. The intellect, according to Bruno, should be free and un-
bound. When it thus exercised its powers, its conclusions attained a
moral coercion which he truly pronounces irresistible. ' Our opinions,' -
he said, ( do not depend on ourselves : evidence, the force of circum-
stances, the reason, the will of God impose them on us. If no man
therefore thinks what he wishes nor as he wishes, no one has the
right of compelling another to think as he does. Every man ought
to tolerate with patience, nay with indulgence, the beliefs of his
neighbour. Toleration, that natural faith graven upon all well-born
hearts, the fruit of the enlightened reason, is an indispensable re-
quirement of logic, as well as a precept of morality and religion.'
Noble words ! we may add, addressed to an intolerant age. Bruno
was unfortunately more alive to the advantages of toleration than
sedulous in its practice. We have already seen how vehement his
antipathy occasionally became to modes of thought and feeling which
he declined or was unable to approve.

As a contrast to the Free-thought of Montaigne and his followers,
we must note in passing Bruno's opposition to Humanism. He per-
ceived that whatever servioes classical learning had, in time past,
conferred on the Renaissanoe when it was a new movement, it now
threatened to become in some cases an intellectual despotism. A
tyrant was to him a tyrant, even though he bad commenced his
career as tribune of the people. Not only the thought but even the
language of modern Europe was becoming subjected to the sway of
antiquity. Aristotle and Plato ruled men's minds, Cicero their
tongues, Seneca and the poets their feelings. Bruno was indignant
with a subserviency which threatened to become abject servility
He pours his invective like a lava-flood over the grammarian, the
pedant, and the purist: speaking of the vanity of these apes of the
ancients, he says of one of them, ' Though he is only an individual,
he alone, thanks to his superiority, is equal to all men. Should he
happen to laugh he calls himself Demokritus, should he weep he is

vol. 1. Y

322 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

Heraklitus, when he argues he is Aristotle, when he constructs his
chimeras he takes the name of Plato, when he loudly harangues he
styles himself Demosthenes, when he construes a phrase of Virgil
he becomes Maro himself. By turns he chides Achilles, approves
^neas, blames Hector, exclaims against Pyrrhus, laments with
Priam, accuses Turnus, excuses Dido, praises Achates ; in a word,
nihil divinum a se alienum putat. 1 For the same reason Bruno jeers
at compositions such as Montaigne's Essays, in which the dicta of
ancient ages and poets are joined together like patchwork, or he
describes them as a mixed salad of proverbs, of Greek and Latin
phrases. He also employs the inversion of the common saying, viz.
that antiquity is the youth of the world, and the present its old age.
What did antiquity know of the extension of the earth and the
heavens by Columbus and Copernicus, of the advances science was
then making ? Antiquity had, according to Bruno, served its pur-
pose; philosophers must now turn their faces to new worlds, and
expend their energies on new objects.

3. But with all his stress on the new astronomy and his anticipa-
tion of the triumphs of modern science, Bruno has little claim to be
regarded as a physical scientist. The bent of his genius was alto-
gether-metaphysical. He had little capacity, and less taste, for the
slow, plodding methods of induction. His eager spirit and compre-
hensive intellect grasped intuitively the inference from any given
fact or series of observations, whether of Nature or humanity, and
his fervid imagination immediately deduced the extremest possible
consequences from such a conclusion. In this respect the contrast
so frequently pointed out between Bruno and Galileo is very remark-
able. While the latter was thoroughly imbued by the spirit of modern
scientific methods, Bruno was mainly the idealist, the theoriser and
the poet. Both accepted the Copernican system, for instance ; but
whiio Galileo was busily exploring our own planetary system with
his telescope, Bruno had already traversed infinite space on the wings
of imagination, and filled the remote heavens with other suns and
inhabited planets far beyond human ken or research. While
Galileo was satisfied with determining the physical features and laws
of our own system, Bruno had boldly speculated on the relation
which the new astronomy must necessarily bear to humanity and its
concerns, to Christianity and its doctrines, to political and social
regulations. While again a modern scientist would have explored
by laborious induction the particular law governing a given phenome-
non, Bruno must needs obtain by his monads and his metaphysical
abstractions a comprehensive theory, which included and explained

1 Bar., ii. 51. Comp. p. 299.

Giordano Bruno. 323

to his satisfaction all natural phenomena. A # partial or particular
truth, the isolated cause of a single phenomenon, a process or dis-
covery that he could not formulate in terms of the Absolute or the
Infinite, was to him no truth at all. These qualities and tendencies
of Bruno have naturally met with scant sympathy among our induc-
tive philosophers. Contrasted with Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo,
the men of science and observation, Bruno seems but a vain dreamer,
a thinker who intermingled strange paradoxes and trivial fancies
with serious and well grounded hypotheses ; and whose occasionally
correct adumbrations of scientific truth are only the happy guesses
of an erratic imagination which, in its impetuous and fantastic
careering in every conceivable direction, must needs have come into
occasional contact with ideas more or less true. To all of which
may be replied, in the words of a well-known proverb, ' The king's
chaff is as good as other people's corn.' Bruno, with the help of
what he terms the lume interno, ragione naturale, altezza delV inte-
letto, anticipated what neither Copernicus nor Galileo foresaw, and
the bare idea of which is said to have ( horrified ' Kepler. 1 I mean
the doctrine of more habitable worlds than one. Nor were Bruno's
incursions into science so entirely idealistic, and divorced from all
physical proofs and considerations, as some of his critics have assumed.
Thus in the inference just maintained, analogy would suffice to sug-
gest that planets similarly circumstanced to our own might also have
living beings, in many respects like ourselves. As a rule, Bruno
starts in every case from a physical science basis. His abstractions
are, as we observed, metaphysical inferences from the infinite he re-
cognized in Nature. His definition of God is derived from the laws
of the visible world. His ideal worlds are but shadowy copies of this,
though, like a disciple of PI o tin us, he would fain have reversed this
relation and made this the evanescent shadow of other Real worlds
invisible and eternal. It was as a disciple of modern science — not as j
a metaphysician — that he first betrayed his Skepticism and came into/
hostile contact with the Church. In a word, with all his admitted
idealistic tendencies, Brnno started in his investigations from the
standpoint of physical science. The Pegasus on which he wings

1 Delarabre, HUUrire de VAHronomie Modern, i. 886. Speaking of the in*
finity of the Universe, he says, ' C'etait le sentiment du malheureux Jordanus
Bruno ; Kepler le combat, la seule idee que l'6toile puisse 6tre un nouveau
monde, le fait frissoner d'horreur.' Humboldt, in his Cotmo* (in. p. 18),
makes the mistake of saying that Bruno regarded Kepler ( with enthusiastic
admiration,' whereas, Berti has pointed out, Kepler's first work was published
when Bruno had already spent four years in the prison of the Roman Inquisi-
tion. Berti, Copernico, etc., p. 87, note 2.

(

324 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance,

his flight towards the Infinite is not only an earth-born steed, dieted
on terrestrial hay and oats, bnt has received some preliminary exercise
on terra firma.

I have already hinted at Bruno's forecasts of modern-science
theories and discoveries. Besides his anticipations of inhabited
worlds, and distant sons, he made some happy conjectures as to the
movement of the fixed stars, the planetary nature of comets, the true
figure of the earth, viz. that it was not quite spherical, the forma-
tion of the sun, viz. a luminous photosphere superimposed on an
opaque nucleus ; he seems also to have had some presentiment of the
discovery that the constituents of heavenly bodies are similar to
those of our own globe.

Moreover, his attempt to unify all the processes of Nature, though
put forward as a transcendental conception, has a distinct rapproche-
ment to recent discoveries in physical science, whereby the conser-
vation and relation of forces have become well founded scientific
hypotheses. Moreover, should future science now resolve all the
physical forces of the universe into different modifications of one
single elementary force, Bruno might be adduced, with some show of
reason, as having had a presentiment of such a truth.
/ 4. As a natural result of his greater mental versatility, Bruno's
J influence on modern thought has greatly exceeded that of his con-
\ temporaries, Galileo and Kepler. Not only has he anticipated the
conclusions of physicists, but he has engendered and stimulated no
inconsiderable amount of metaphysical speculation, both in his own
country and in Germany. This fact will perhaps not add to his
credit among the disciples of Comte and other scientific dogmatists of
our own day. But those who still retain the attributes of genuine
philosophers, who believe that nothing essentially human lies outside
the scope of philosophic sympathy, who recognize the Infinite in
Nature and in Humanity, who are well acquainted- with the part
metaphysics have played in time past, and who watch contemporary
currents of speculation, will not think less of Bruno for indicating so
many phases of speculation, and presenting so many points of contact,
metaphysical as well as physical, with the common thought and senti-
ment of mankind. With all the so-called progress of modern science,
notwithstanding its perpetual attempts to circumscribe human feel-
ing, Idealistic energy and aspiration within the limits of bodily senses,
and its efforts to dwarf the Infinite to the measure of the Finite, the
mind of man still bears unmistakable traces of its origin and of its
destiny : Like that of Bruno it tends, when free and un thwarted, to
the Infinite.
Having thus sketched, at greater length than I intended, the

Giordano Bruno. 325

salient points of Bruno's teaching, I now resume the thread of his
history.

Eight years had elapsed since this apostle of Free-thought had been
deprived of freedom — years, we may well suppose, of terrible tor-
ture and misery; but sustained by the conviction that he had but
employed the faculties God had given him to discover truth ; and as
he himself pleaded, he had absolutely no power to thwart or contra-
dict what seemed to be their clear and unbiassed conclusions. The
end was now drawing nigh. The Holy Office was getting impatient
with the obstinacy which it regarded as an aggravation of the origi-
nal ' heretical pravity." Numberless had been the attempts to
break down the stubborn spirit of the Nolan philosopher. Theolo-
gians, we are told, had visited him daily for that purpose, but their
efforts were powerless. He had also been repeatedly summoned
before the Congregation of the Holy Office; but with no result. The
records of some of these interviews are among the ' Roman Docu-
ments ' Professor Berti has published. 1 Thus, on Thursday, the 14th
of January, 1599, Bruno was ( visited, 1 i.e. brought before the Con-
gregation, which consisted of sixteen cardinals and other ecclesiasti-
cal dignitaries. On this particular occasion were read eight heretical
propositions extracted from Bruno's works by the commissary gene-
ral of the Holy Office, with the help of Bellarmine ; who seems to
have been as forward in the proceedings against Bruno as he was
afterwards in the persecution of Galileo. These propositions were
submitted to Bruno for deliberation and recantation. On Thursday,
the 4th of February, of the same year, Bruno was again before the
Congregation, when the term of forty days was assigned as the
period within which his deliberations should be confined. What
happened at the end of the forty days when Bruno, no doubt, reite-
rated his previous refusals, we do not know. Another summer and
autumn passed slowly over the head of the immured philosopher; and
the next news we have of him is on Tuesday, the 21st of December,
when he is once more brought before the Congregation. On this
occasion he said that ' he neither ought nor wished to recant ; indeed,
he had nothing to recant, and was ignorant of the matters on which
his recantation was demanded — an allegation which probably signi-
fies his skeptical ignorance of those dogmas for which his concurrence
was required. The same day, perhaps on the same occasion, Bruno
was heard on the subject of his opinions and his prison privations —
doubtless a plea against the cruelties to which he was subjected —
and the Congregation appointed certain of their body to try and
persuade him to abjure, by the promise of consequent advantage and

1 Sae his Copernico e vicende del $i$Uma Copernicano in Italia, pp. 219-235.

326 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

gain. 1 Thus passed the last month of 1599. Three weeks of the
new year — the last of his life— had gone by, and Bruno stood again
before his inquisitors. This time he presented a memorial, which
was opened but not read. That its contents were of an unsatisfactory
character is shown by the appended decree, which informs us that
the General of the Domincans and the Procurator General had been
appointed to address him (for the last time) on the subject of his
recantation. Once more Bruno refused, boldly maintaining that he
had never put forth heretical propositions; by which he no doubt
meant consciously false ones. The resolution was thereupon made
that extreme proceedings must be taken, and Bruno delivered over to
the secular arm. 2 This was formally done on Tuesday, the 8th of
February. Bruno was then declared an impenitent and obstinate
heretic, and ordered to be delivered over to the civil powers. The
next day was appointed for the public announcement of the sentence,
and the formal degradation of Bruno as an apostate and lapsed priest.
Professor Berti is apparently in error in supposing that this cere-
mony took place in the church of Santa Maria della Minerva, subse-
quently employed for this purpose. 3 Both Scioppius and the Avvisi^
or Roman Gazette of the day, agree in making the palace of the
Supreme Cardinal Inquisitor (Madruzzi) 4 the scene of the event.
There for the last time Bruno appeared before his judges, attired
according to his usual custom in his Dominican dress. He was com-
pelled to kneel down and listen to his sentence. The recital com-
prised the chief events of his life, the erroneous opinions of his
writings, both interpreted by the false light of ecclesiastical prejudice.
The tender and solicitous efforts of the Holy Office to convert him
were duly recapitulated ; and once more his obstinacy was denounced
with the unctuous and hypocritical expressions of regret commonly
employed by the Inquisition on such occasions. To the long harangue
Bruno listened with firm and unmoved countenance. With equal

1 ' Eique ( Jordano) oetendat propositiones abjurandas at agnoscat errores, se
emendat, ac disponat ad abjurandum, ipsumque lucri faciant ut poesit expe-
diri.' — Berti, Copernico, p. 280; Documenti, p. 70.

* Berti, Copernico, p. 281.

8 The business of the Boman Inquisition at this period was regulated by
the Constitution of Sixtus V. (' Immensa JSterni Dei ' ), a.d. 1588. See details
in Limborch Hittory of the Inquisition, i. p. 158, etc., etc. According to the
same authority, ' These Supreme Inquisitors meet twice a week, viz. on Wed-
nesdays, formerly in the house of the oldest Cardinal Supreme Inquisitor, but
now in St. Mary's Church Supra Minervam, except the Pope commands other-
wise, 1 pp. 154-5 ; comp. Berti, Copernico, p. 288.

4 In the Congregation of December, 1599, a list of the members of which is
extant, the first name is Cardinalis Mandrutius, and the second Cardinalis S.
Severinse. Copernico, p. 228.

Giordano Bruno. 327

unconcern he underwent the ceremony of degradation— the stripping
off his priestly vestments and attiring him in the heretic's coat of
the San benito, while the solemn formula was pronounced * By the
authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and by
our own, we take from thee the clerical habit, we depose and degrade
thee, and deprive thee of every ecclesiastical order and benefice. ' l
Once only did Bruno condescend to notice the grim farce of which
he was the object. When the sentence was pronounced, he turned
to his judges and with a firm voice and defiant expression, uttered
the noble and memorable words, ( I suspect you are more afraid to
pronounce that sentence than I am to receive it*' * The ceremony
over, Bruno was consigned to the secular arm with the usual injunc-
tion, that ( he should be punished as leniently as possible, and without
shedding of blood ' — the iniquitous formula for death by fire. There-
upon he was removed to the civil prison at Rome. The usual delay
of eight days was granted in order to afford one last opportunity of
recantation, but in vain. At length he was brought forth to die on
Thursday, the 17th of February.

The scene must have been remarkable. The year 1600 was a
jubilee year. There were then in Rome no less than fifty cardinals. 3
The streets were crowded with pilgrims. In every, direction might
be seen troops of strangers dressed in the different costumes of their
own country, wending their way from one church to another, im-
ploring pardon for their sins. There was ringing^of bells, marching
of processions, singing penitential psalms,, offering of vows and
prayers at different shrines from morning till night. * While it might
have seemed,' says Berti, 4 ( that all hearts ought to have been in-
clined to mercy, and attracted lovingly to the gentle Redeemer of
humanity, the poor philosopher of Nola, preceded and followed by
crowds of people, accompanied by priests, carrying crucifixes and
escorted by soldiers, was wending his way to* the Campo di Fiora to
die for freedom and the rights of conscience. As the lonely thinker
— the disciple and worshipper of the Infinite — passed through the
streets, clothed in the San benito, but with head erect, and haughty,
fearless glance, what thoughts must have passed through his mind !
The feeling of utter isolation could not but have been felt by him.
He must have found — it was the conclusion of his intellectual
career, the inevitable destiny, too often, of the single-hearted truth-
seeker — that he was alone in his researches, in his passionate quest

1 Berti, Vita, p. 298.

* ( Majori forsan euro timore sententiam in me dicetis quam ego accipam.' —
Bartholmess, i. p. 888.

• Berti, Ftto, p. 295. 4 B.'rti, loc. cit.

328 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

for truth, In the inferences and conclusions he had laboriously wrought
out. Sympathy with the crowds round him who, no doubt, hooted the
heretic in order to display their own orthodoxy, he was hardly likely
to feel, except as a sentiment of pity for the ignorance and fanaticism
of which he was only one victim among many. He may have com-
miserated the ' Santa Asinita ' of his enemies just as Huss did the
( Sancta simplicitas ' of the poor woman who was devoutly bringing a
faggot to his pyre. He could not but regard them as the followers of
a religion which, no matter what its original excellencies, had become
utterly depraved and immoral, a base and merciless tyranny over
the conscience and freedom of mankind ; or from the heights of his
philosophy and his confidence in the final triumph of truth, he may
have looked forward to a time when the ' Triumphant Beast ' would
be expelled in accordance with his own prediction; or if not expelled,
would be deprived of its power to suppress and destroy every effort
and aspiration after truth ; or his imagination might possibly have
been concentrated on those celestial worlds so often the objects of his
contemplation and devout yearning, and on existences and pursuits
more in harmony with his ideas of intellectual freedom and perfection.
Among the last words contemporary tradition assign to him is the
% dying utterance of Plotinus : * * I go to carry the Divine in us to the
Divine in the universe ; ' 2 while the report was current among the
newsmongers of the day that Bruno said that he died a martyr and
willingly, even though his soul should not ascend to Paradise with
the smoke of his fire, but that was of no consequence to him if he
spoke the truth,' 8 words which, if authentic, are the fitting expres-
sions when dying of one who living professed to love the truth for the
truth's sake, ( per amor de la vera sapienza e studio de la vera con-
templazione m* affatico, mi cruccio e mi tormento. 7 4

At length he comes to the fatal spot where the stake had been
erected. He submits himself to be bound, and in a few minutes the
fire blazes round the martyr; but not a word or moan escapes the firm
set lips, no expression of suffering or weakness passes across the wan

1 C. Cantu, 01% Eretici <T Italia, iii. p. 62. * Xarrano die ripetisse le parole
di Plotino.'

• UcipaaSat to h iifwr Seior ivayew wpds to* iv ry xturrl dtiov. Prophyr. de vita
Plotini.

8 Berti, Copernico, p. 234.

4 Op. Ital., ii. p. 4. The whole passage, which is noteworthy, is as follows :
( £ se erro, non credo veramente errare, e parlando e scrivendo non disputo per

amor de la vittoria per se stessa, per che ogni riputazione e vittoria stimo

nemica a dio, vilissima, e senza pun to d' onore, dove non e la verita,— ma per
amor de la vera sapienza e studio de la vera contemplazione m' affatico, mi
cruccio, mi tormento.'

Giordano Bruno. - 329

and pale but still handsome features. One single gesture of impati-
ence he gives way to when his tormentors thrust the crucifix before
his dying gaze. Then, Schioppius tells, he averted his eyes with a
threatening glance. And surely any expression of disdain and indig-
nation might have been justified on the occasion. The sacred symbol
of Christianity had long become the degraded emblem of ambition,
lust and tyranny, a sign from which every man endued with a sense
of religion and virtue would at such a time instinctively avert his
eyes.

( Thus/ says Schioppius, ' burnt, he perished miserably ; he is gone,
I suppose,' he adds satirically, ' to recount to those other worlds
imagined by himself the way in which Romans treated blasphemous
and impious men.' x Whether this information has ever reached the
star-worlds of Bruno is a matter of small importance. The intelli-
gence, with much ill news of a similar kind, has long since reached the
worlds of futurity equally contemplated by Bruno — the worlds of
modern thought and progress, of enlightenment and civilization, of
toleration and Christian charity. There it is again and again recorded
' How Romans treated those ' whom they chose to denominate ' blas-
phemers ' ; but as often as the tale is heard, it duly excites renewed
sympathy for the sufferers and bitter indignation against their merci-
less persecutors. Now it is known on which side lay the blasphemy
— the high treason against God— on his, whose life was spent in
earnest search for truth, whose every thought was a passionate
enthusiasm for the Infinite, or on theirs who, in the interests of
intellectual obscurantism and unchristian tyranny, slew him. Now it
is determined, with some approach to a definitive and irreversible
judgment, that an interpretation of Christianity which could by any
perversion of reasoning be supposed to sanction such an iniquitous
deed was itself the greatest of blasphemies.

Bruno and Vanini share with most other martyrs of Free-
thought the forecast of the end destined to crown their life-work.
The essential incompatibility between their own freer instincts and
the dogmatic restrictions by which in past times they were sur-
rounded seems to assume the form of a grave, though not mournful,
presentiment of a violent death. In Bruno's case the feeling was
also connected with his mental characteristics. It was but one phase
or outcome of the fervid impetuosity of his intellect, the far-seeing
anticipation of his imagination. His very earnestness in truth-search,
accompanied by the indomitable consciousness of honesty and good

1 Bartholmess, i. p. 888. ' Sicque ustulatus misere periit, renunciatarus credo
in reliquis illis quos finxit mundis quonam pacto homines blasphemi et impii
a Romania tractari solent.'

33° The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance,

faith, made him supremely indifferent to consequences. What, after
all, was more glorious than martyrdom for truth and for mental free-
dom ? what more noble than self-sacrifice for the highest interests of
humanity ? What existence could compare in fame, in triumph, in
virtue, in unselfishness, in true greatness, to such a death ? Bruno
gives utterance to his feelings and anticipations on this point in his
Eroici furori, written sixteen years before his death. 'How much
better/ says Cicada, Bruno's representative in that dialogue, ( is a
worthy and heroic death than a disgraceful and vile success.'

( On that proposition,' responds the poet Tansillo, ( I composed this
sonnet,' whereupon Bruno borrows from Tansillo the verses which
have been generally accepted as his own prediction of his fate, and
which express so nobly his feelings at the prospect, —

' Since I my wings to sweet desire do lend,
The more the air uprises 'neath my feet,
The swifter on the gale my pinions beat,
And earth despising, toward heaven I tend.
Nor for the son of Itod'lus' guilty end
Feel I dismay, nay, rather buoyant heat
His deadly fall I joyfully would meet,
Peer to such death what life could mortal spend.
Soaring I hear my trembling heart's refrain
" Where bearest me, rash one ? The fell steep
Too arduous is not climb'd without much pain."
u Fear not," I answer, " for the fatal leap
Serene I cleave the clouds and death disdain,
If death so glorious heaven will that I reap." ' l

Never did human ambition assume a nobler and purer form, never
was presentiment more completely and triumphantly realized. Like
another son of Daedalus, at least an investigator of the 'Natura
D»dala rerum,' ( the Daedalian nature of things,' Bruno's eagle flight
was cut off in mid air; and he fell as he wished, and prognosticated,

the victim of dogma but the heir of immortal fame.

• • •

Soon after these sheets were written preparations were made to
commemorate the services which Giordano Bruno rendered to the
cause of European enlightenment. Tardily, but perhaps not more so
than the circumstances of the case warranted, the Italy he loved
with so fatal a passion has recognized formally and publicly her
appreciation of her gifted but unfortunate child. In addition to
successive fetes and memorials at Nola and Naples, a statue, the cost
of which has been defrayed by public subscription, has been erected

1 Eroic Fur., Op. Ital., ii. p. 886.

Giordano Bruno. 331

to his memory in Rome ; while the Italian Government at its own
expense has consented to publish an edition of his collected works.
Thus his firm and heroic features now adorn the city, perhaps over-
look the very spot, where his constancy was put to such a cruel test,
and where his ashes were scattered to the wind ; while his works,
proscribed and burnt by the Inquisition, will, it is hoped, soon be in
the hands of all cultivated Italians. 1 Henceforth the fame and ap-
preciation he longed for, but only saw in the dim vista of futurity,
are likely to be lavished on him with no niggard hand. In an Italy
such as he would have delighted to call his native land, where at
last thought enjoys the ' libertas philosophandi ' for which he craved
and energised, and where the religious tyranny against which he
protested no longer exists, Giordano enjoys the reparation rightly
due to himself and the sublime cause of human liberty he so worthily
represented. The recent revival of interest in himself and his
writings suggest a parallel with the circumstances of his actual life.
After many years' wandering in Europe he returned to his native
land to find a long imprisonment and a martyr's death. Now,
however, after the interval of some centuries, during which his
name, except in works of philosophy, and in other parts of Europe,
has been almost forgotten, and his writings well nigh destroyed, he,
metaphorically, again returns to the Italy of his yearning, to enjoy
through all futurity his rightful distinction of being, besides hero
and martyr, one of the foremost philosophers and thinkers that
favoured country has ever produced.

Miss Leycester. Poor Bruno ! What a magnificent sub-
ject his life and death would be for an old Greek myth or a
tragedy of iEschylus — * Prometheus Bound and Unbound — in
a single life-drama.' The myth might perhaps assume this
form : The hero is, let us say, the son of the fire-god Vesuvius.
Molten fire courses through his veins, fire gleams from his eyes
and takes a thousand varied forms in the brilliant pyrotechnic
creations of his imagination. His impassioned words are like
thunder-bolts and lightning-shafts, and his course like that of
a fiery comet. Prometheus-like, he wishes to diffuse the bless-
ings of heat and light among men. He fetches the vital flame
not only from the single sun of our own system, but from the
numberless suns scattered through space. All this concentrated

1 At this date (1892) eight volumes, or more accurately, three volumes, in
eight parts, of this National Edition of Bruno's whole works have appeared.

332 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

light he displays to men ; some of whom admire him for his
beneficence and rejoice in his enlightenment, while others hate
him for discovering and exposing their ignorance. His per-
petual war is with darkness and voluntary blindness. The
eagles and birds of the daylight are glad in his presence ; the
owls and bats detest him. His light-giving mission he accom-
plishes in the varied irregular way in which all light-diffusers
seem compelled to discharge their functions to humanity.
Sometimes the flame which Bruno displays is bright and clear,
while at other times it is not free from ashes and smoke and
scori®. At last, after a wild meteor course of a few years, he
falls into the hands of his greatest enemy, the Prince of Dark-
nese, who wishes to keep mankind in ignorance and slavery.
He takes and binds for many years the Italian Prometheus, —
not that he can altogether extinguish the light, but he can
arrest the course of the light-giver. Ultimately our Prometheus
disappears from earth in a flame of fire ; the element which
gave him birth and consigned him to the bondage of life thus
becoming the elemental cause of his death as man, though
giving him new birth and eternal freedom as a fire-god. In
requital of his services to men, and notwithstanding the op-
position of his enemy, * The Prince of the Power of the Air,'
the comet becomes a stationary and brilliant star, and the
1 Prometheus Bound ' of our material world achieves the
position of the ' Prometheus Unbound ' of Olympian deities
and high human intelligences.

Harrington. In outline your myfhos might be correct, but
as matters of detail you exaggerate, I think, Bruno's light-
bearing merits; and you do not discriminate between the
Promethean fire he steals from heaven and the flames which
the Prince of Darkness takes — I suppose from the opposite
region — to consume him. But leaving the " myth " for history,
I Bruno is an eminent instance of a mental progress, of which
/ we have other instances on our list — I mean the evolution
I from Skepticism to Mysticism. I do not mean the religious
mysticism of Augustine and Cornelius Agrippa, but the half-
pantheistic mysticism of Nicolas of Cusa and Raymund Lulli —
a curious and indefinable conglomerate of philosophy, poetry,

Giordano Bruno. 333

devotion and superstition. It is wonderful how many noble
intellects, who have started on the clear track of inductive
reasoning and experimental philosophy, have come ultimately
to anchor in this broad but misty harbour. I have always
regarded the fact as an involuntary homage to the unknown
by which we are surrounded. Is not this, by the way, the
interpretation of that most mysterious of all modern dramas —
the second part of Faust ? In the first part the hero, whom
I take to impersonate Goethe himself, has exhausted the sup-
posed truths and pleasures which belong to earth, and has
reaped from them nothing but skepticism and satiety. In the
second — like Bruno in his excursions through space, or his
mystical treatises on Lulli's philosophy (you remember how
he describes his idealism as an emancipation from prison) —
Faust awakens to a newer life. He describes the event in
lines of which we might find a thousand-fold echo in Bruno's
works —

Des Lebens Pulse scblagen f risch lebendig
Aetberische D&mm'rung milde zu begrtlssen :
Du Erde warst aucb diese Nacb,t bestandig
TJnd athmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fttssen,
Beginnest scbon mit Lust micb zu umgeben
Du regst und rtthrst ein kraftiges Bescbliessen
Zuin htfchsten Daseyn immerfortzu streben.

In other words, he determines to enjoy a higher existence in
a shadowy world of phantasies and abstractions; in which,
indeed, he becomes so immersed as to lose most of his own
individuality, though he does not quite lose the skeptical truth-
searching spirit of his former life. Of course Goethe had a
more scientific knowledge than Bruno of the real powers of
Nature ; but that is the chief difference between them.

Trevor. Your idea may have something to say for it. But
any distinct definition of Goethe's object in the second part of
Faust seems to me hazardous. In fact, I have never been able
to perceive that he had any set purpose at all in the construc-
tion of the poem. It is a congeries of dramas, phantasies,
rhapsodies and sublimities relating to nature, art, philosophy,
theology ; in short, to most things in heaven above, the earth
beneath, and the regions under the earth. If we could cer-

334 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

tainly regard it from your point of view as Goethe's intellectual
goal, then we might take it, together with Bruno's Lullism and
the mysticism of so many other thinkers, as an instance of the
tendency to expansiveness which marks the latter stages of the
mental progress of some great thinkers — a kind of intellectual
eclecticism combined with emotional diffusiveness — which is
the opposite pole to the narrow dogmatism in which ordinary
minds at last find anchorage.

Arundel. An approximation to Bruno's poetic philosophy
nearer home we might find in Shelley, whose Prometheus
Unbound may be said to represent the second or expansive
part of his mental career, as the second part of Faust does in
Goethe's case. Such a poem as Alastor, for instance, is redolent
of the vague, tender mysticism in which Bruno loved to ex-
patiate. Indeed, there seems some similarity in the objects
of their separate works. The Spaccio delle Bestia Trionfante
may well pair off with the Prometheus Unbound, while Gli
eroici furori might have borne the title of * Hymn to Intel-
lectual Beauty.' 1

Miss Leycester. You might have carried your parallelism
further. The severe strictures on priests and the intolerance
and dogmatism of churches contained in the Revolt of Islam
resemble pretty closely what we find on the same topics in
Bruno's works. If his doctrine of metempsychosis were true,
we might easily imagine that the soul of Bruno had passed
into Shelley.

Harrington. Those whom Bruno's spirit and method seem
especially to have animated are the philosophers of Italy since
his time. There we have an instance of a national philosophy
— the most perfect in Europe — which has, without a single
eminent ex(jeption, started from similar positions, and arrived
at like conclusions. Its two chief characteristics are Free-
thought and Idealism, the latter being sometimes religious,
sometimes not. It would hardly be a great exaggeration to
say that the ghost of Bruno, slightly * clothed upon ' by the

1 As the similarity of Shelley to Bruno has been made the subject of more
than one magazine and review article during late years, it may he right to
say that these words were written in 1879.

Giordano Bruno. 335

German speculation of the last century, now occupies all the
tore most chairs in Italian universities ; for they seem filled by
Hegelians.

Miss Leycester. We must beware of laying too much
stress on a singular manifestation of principles common to all
idealists from Parmenides to the present day. At the sata*
time Bruno's influence on Germany seems more remarkable
than the community of sentiment which he naturally shares
with his thoughtful, imaginative countrymen. For, next t
Hume — and even that exception may be questioned — he is the
foreign thinker who has most stimulated and influenced Ger-
man speculation since the time of Kant, especially if we take
into consideration the debt Spinoza also owes to him.

Trevor. It is easy, I think, to exaggerate the similarity
between Bruno and succeeding idealists, and it is a mistake ..
into which more than one of his biographers and critics have
fallen. What is certainly true of his writings is their mar-
vellous suggestiveness. This, I think, would be admitted by
any thinking man in our own day. But he is better adapted \ \
for indicating new sources and directions of knowledge than/ )
for fully availing himself of the former, or persistently follow-
ing up any one of the latter.

Harrington. His intellectual tendency might be summed \
up in a small compass as a determination to Infinitize, if I /
might coin the word. Schelling, in his Bruno Dialogue, says,
' Die Neigung das Unendliche in dem Endlichen und hinwie-
derum dieses in jenem zu setzen in alien philosophischen
Reden und Untersuchungen herrschend ist.' l To find the
Infinite in the finite of religion, physical science, humanity,
was the main purport of his teaching. Though I am aware
this tendency may be misapplied, and in some aspects be made
to appear ludicrous, it has always seemed to me the mark of
a comprehensive intellect. I think, on the whole, all superior
minds gravitate to the Infinite. We see this not only in the
case of theologians and their definitions of the universal exist-
ence and energy of the Supreme Being, but in their antagonists,
the positivists and physical scientists. The materialist, who

1 Schelling, Sdmmlliche Werke, iv. p. 242.

336 The Skeptics of tlie Italian Renaissance.

/ denies a God, will yet plead for the eternity and omnipresence
\ of matter. The scientist, who denies the Divine government
of the world, will still insist on the eternity and universality
of the laws of causation or gravitation. The legislator with
his codes, the moralist with his precepts, will endeavour to
base their respective regulations on some permanent and im-
perishable basis; in short, they infinitize equally with the
theologian, and frequently, I must own, with considerably less
reason or justification.

Trevor. I presume you do not mean that the induction of
instances on which a scientist founds some hypothesis, e.g. the
law of evolution, is of the same kind as the inferences of the
theologian, from the order, regularity and design he discerns
in nature.

Harrington. I was speaking at the moment of the un-
reasonable contempt which scientists and positivists show for
the conceptions of the theologian when they transcend what
we actually see, and I suggested that their own conceptions
frequently pass the limits of the seen and the knowable.

Arundel. But I really do not see why you might not have
gone a step further, and placed the conclusions of the reason-
ing theologian on precisely the same basis as those of the
scientist. The latter, for instance, deduces from a certain
chain of facts and observations the doctrine of evolution as
the eternal process which has brought about the existing
variety of living beings on the earth. I also, e.g. infer from
a consideration of different processes I perceive in operation
about me — laws of nature, of history, and morality — a Divine
mind. Why is the cogency of my inference to be considered
inferior to that of his ? The question is of the agency which
produces a number of effects. I pronounce for mind in the
form of eternal volition. The scientist declares for the mere
process as the ultimate link in his chain of the knowable — the
blind striving or effort which he affirms is all he is cognisant
of, on which ground, I suppose of the superior merits of blind-
ness to foresight, he calls my deduction superstitious, while
he dignifies his own by the appellation of science.
Trevor. Well, we are neither atheists nor positivists, so

Giordano Bruno. 337

the question does not immediately concern us. But, in fairness
to the science point of view, you must acknowledge that there
is a difference between merely affirming a process of which a
man has direct evidence before his eyes and asserting an unseen
and yet personal cause which, ex vi terminorum, is unprovable.

Harrington. I confess I agree with Arundel. If the
scientist infers from his induction an external or universal
process, or, as I said, if he infinitizes, he stands really on the
same ground as the theologian. Remember, I do not blame
the tendency to infinitize. Besides being useful, it is clearly
quite irresistible. All I say is, I cannot perceive the adequacy
of the reasoning on which the scientist of our day commonly
attacks theology. Of course I acknowledge still less the
validity of the reasons for which theology, in time past, has
attacked and sought to suppress science.

Miss Leycester. But granting this tendency to infinitize,
as you call it, I want to ask whether we are to regard it as
intuitional and inborn, or as a result of experience or associa-
tion. In the first case we might take it as the subjective
feeling or sense by which we apprehend religion ; in the second
case, I suppose we could not do so.

Arundel. Why not ? A capacity for acquiring might be
just as strong a proof that we were destined for the acquisition,
as an instinctive and inborn feeling would be. I suppose that
the intuition, as an innate faculty, would hardly be denied
among races accustomed to contemplate and reason on the
Infinite.

Mrs. Harrington. Bruno's infinitizing process was, I think,
happily employed when he brought it to bear on ecclesiastical
dogmas. I often long to ask about some petty detail of Chris-
tian worship, or some unimportant matter of doctrine — How
would it bear the test of the Infinite in time and space ? What
would the inhabitants of Sirius, supposing there are any, and
are reasoning beings like ourselves, think of our squabbles
about vestments and rubrics, or the charity of the Athanasian
Creed? Whereas the precepts on which Christ lays stress
have distinctly an infinite and eternal character. Granting
the existence of reasoning beings, and the duties He commands

vol. i. z

338 The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance.

are necessary and universal— as true in a remote planet as
they are here, and at certain aeons before the promulgation of
Christianity as they will be for ages to come.

Harrington. Undoubtedly, they partake of the old formula
for universal truth, which by some strange irony, has been
adapted to ecclesiastical dogma : ' Quod semper, quod ubique,
quod ab omnibus.'

Trevor. "What you say is true ; only don't forget the hint
in my paper as to the unsatisfactory nature of that extremely
subtle, metaphysical and recondite Christianity evolved by
German transcendentalism, and which is often as great a con-
trast to the simplicity of the Gospel as the dogmas of the most
ecclesiastical of Christian churches. The Infinite must no
doubt enter into the constitution of every Christian faith;
and for that reason the distance between Pantheism and any
other form of Theism does not appear to me so great as it does
to some persons ; certainly does not sanction the persecution of
the supposed Pantheist, as in the cases of Bruno, Vanini and
Spinoza.

Harrington. Every theology which is founded on or allied
with natural theology — and this I take to be true of all the
higher religious thought of our time — must contain a greater
or less proportion of Pantheistic elements. The ordinary
language of Christians is saturated with Pan ideas, though
disguised in other tongues. E.g. -AZ-mighty and other divine
attributes into which all enters. So again we have omniscience,
omni-presence, etc. Both the Old and the New Testament
contain similar Pantheistic implications, though they are com-
monly disregarded. The 139th Psalm could only have been
written by one whose inclinations were Pantheistic. The
well-known words, * In Him we live, and move and have our
being,' also tend to Pantheism. Bruno has its sentiment in
numberless passages of his works.

Miss Lrtcestrr. That is what angers me in calling to mind
the persecutions of such men as Bruno and Spinoza, whose
conceptions of Deity, if duly investigated, are only the meta-
physical form of the Infinite of Nature ; so that the inevitable
sublimity and extent of their ideas are proclaimed unsound by

Giordano Bruno. 339

beings whose notions of God are relatively so limited, insig-
nificant and unworthy. What a grim mockery of justice, that
a man who thinks of the Supreme Being only as a somewhat
enlarged reflection of himself — whose very anthropo- morphism
is an eavTca morphism, i.e. not a generalization from all that is
noblest in collective humanity — should be allowed to brand and
burn a